painstaking

comparative more painstaking · superlative most painstaking · alternative archaic pains-taking

1. Carefully attentive to details; studious; diligent in performing a process or procedure.

   All these painstaking men, considered together, may be said to have completed another species of criticism.

   1781, James Harris, Philological Inquiries

   2 more examples

   It is hoped to feature the historic vehicles to be found on the line in a future article, so that full justice may be done to the painstaking work of renovation on many of them, such as the North Eastern Railway Coach Group's NER autocoach No 3453.

   1979 August, Michael Harris, “A line for all reasons: the North Yorkshire Moors Railway”, in Railway World, page 415

   Earl de Sadist’s pioneering efforts didn’t stop there. When the thrill of wedgies faded, he put his great brain to work and after months of painstaking experimentation, he emerged from his workshop with a revolutionary kinky invention: the nipple clamp.

   2005, Annabelle du Fouet, “Toys for kinky girls and boys—It’s not just whips and chains anymore.” (chapter 3), in Weather Balloons Make Rotten Sex Toys, Ellora's Cave, →ISBN, page 53

plural painstakings · alternative archaic pains-taking

1. countableuncountableThe application of careful and attentive effort.

   I esteeme Bocace his Decameron, Rabelais, and the kisses of John the second (if they may be placed under this title) worth the paines-taking to reade them.

   1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 10, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC

   2 more examples

   It is not by a flight of imagination that you gain the ascents of spiritual experience. It is by the toils and the watchings and the painstakings of a solid obedience.

   c. 1836, Thomas Chalmers, Lectures on the Romans

   Behold what an abundant recompense attends the small processes of the earth, with the help of a little warm air; and what wealthy returns the industry of the husbandman and the florist is preparing from a few seeds and painstakings.

   1852, Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham, “Sermon VI”, in Sermons in the Order of a Twelvemonth