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Jun 22, 2010
This week's theme
Words to describe people

This week's words
weathercock
persnickety
nescient
bromidic
esurient

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

persnickety

PRONUNCIATION:
(puhr-SNIK-i-tee)

MEANING:
adjective:
1. Fussy about minor details.
2. Snobbish.
3. Requiring keen attention to detail, as a job.

ETYMOLOGY:
Variant of pernickety (the spelling still used in the UK). Of unknown origin.

USAGE:
"My father and I are both persnickety. We don't like noise in the kitchen, and a few grains of salt on a tablecloth make us shiver."
Cedric Vongerichten; Le Fils; New York Magazine; Sep 20, 2009.

"And what will the filmmakers eventually get for more than 12 hours of painstaking persnickety work?"
Tina Maples; "Dillinger: Gangsters Hit the Library For a Long Shoot; Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, Wisconsin); May 28, 1990.

See more usage examples of persnickety in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Men have slow reflexes. In general it takes several generations later for them to understand. -Stanislaw J. Lec, poet and aphorist (1909-1966)

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