punctilious

comparative more punctilious · superlative most punctilious

1. Strictly attentive to detail; meticulous or fastidious, particularly to codes or conventions.

   With a punctilious slap of the gloves, the duel was now inevitable.

   1 more example

   He was punctilious. According to those who worked with him, even his paperwork was the best they'd seen.

   2001 May 12, Robert Potts, “The poet at play”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Synonyms: accurate, careful, surgical, comprehensive, solicitous, conscientious, exhaustive, fastidious

2. Precise or scrupulous; finicky or nitpicky.

   Of course, humans do not treat time in such a punctilious fashion.

   2009, Ronnie Cann, Ruth Kempson, Eleni Gregoromichelaki, Semantics: an introduction to meaning in language

   1 more example

   Every editor at Merriam-Webster deals with the Black Books at many points during their tenure. The Black Books are the in-house set of rules for writing a dictionary (commonly called a style guide) as conceived and written in punctilious detail by the former editor in chief Philip Babcock Gove, for the creation of Webster’s Third.

   2017, Kory Stamper, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, Pantheon Books, page 103

   Synonyms: finicky, nitpicky, precise, accurate, careful, surgical, comprehensive, solicitous