meticulous

The story

1. French · semantic loan fromméticuleux
2. Latin · learned borrowing frommeticulōsus“full of fear, timid, fearful, terrible, frightful”
3. English todaymeticulous

Learned borrowing from Latin meticulōsus (“full of fear, timid, fearful, terrible, frightful”), from metus (“fear”) and -culōsus, extracted from perīculōsus (“perilous”). Sense of “characterized by very precise, conscientious attention to details” is a semantic loan from French méticuleux.