thoroughgoing

comparative more thoroughgoing · superlative most thoroughgoing · alternative thorough-going

1. With great attention to detail; complete, thorough.

   He did a thoroughgoing job of cleaning up the broken glass.

   4 more examples

   It must be reiterated, as, for the purpose of these Memoranda, the deep lesson of History and Time, that all else in the contributions of a nation or age, through its politics, materials, heroic personalities, military eclat, &c., remains crude, and defers, in any close and thorough-going estimate, until vitalized by national, original archetypes in literature.

   1871, Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas, New York: J.S. Redfield, page 50

   I am myself a thoroughgoing individualist, writing for those who are, like myself, irrevocably committed to the modern experiment.

   1927, T. S. Eliot, “The Humanism of Irving Babbitt”, in Selected Essays, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, published 1964, page 425

   Mr. Prayter was a thorough-going cleric in the way of eating. He ate till there was nothing left.

   1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter XI, in Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 182

   1967, Time, "Marijuana is Still Illegal," 29 December, 1967, https://web.archive.org/web/20130721101358/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,844332,00.html After six months of preparation, Lawyer Joseph Oteri began in September the most thoroughgoing legal attack on antimarijuana laws ever made.

   Synonyms: abject, frightful, absolute, prize, clean, arrant, categoric, categorical