finickity

comparative more finickity · superlative most finickity

1. usuallyFastidious and fussy; difficult to please; exacting, especially about details; meticulous and particular.

   We see, then, that some systems can be unreasonably finickity about the use one may make of assumptions for the sake of argument, especially with a rule like the rule of conditional proof.

   1997, Neil Tennant, The Taming of the True, →ISBN, page 327

   3 more examples

   It's great when you've taken the time to have persuade someone to explain to you the ludicrously finickity way it wants a particular command typing in. Very powerful, but not for end-users.

   1993 October 7, David Covey, “Re: unix is user-friendly”, in comp.unix.user-friendly (Usenet), retrieved 21 Sep 2008

   Q62 Mr Bercow: But £86 million is very precise. It is not £85 million, it is not £90 milllion; it is £86 million. […] I am sorry if you think I am being finickity; I am being very finickity about it but I believe rightly.

   2005, House of Commons International Development Committee, Parliament of Great Britain, Development assistance in Iraq: Interim Report : Seventh Report of Session 2004-05, →ISBN, page 9

   I got most of the money to pay for all this by stealing. It was very wrong. Today I'm so finickity that I fired one of my staff for nicking twenty-pence worth of curtain hangers from Barkers because he couldn't be bothered to wait at the till queue.

   2005, Michael Winner, Winner Takes All, →ISBN, page 11

   Synonyms: fastidious