meticulous

adj
/mɪˈtɪkjɪlɪs/US

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin meticulōsus (“full of fear, timid, fearful, terrible, frightful”), from metus (“fear”) and -culōsus, extracted from perīculōsus (“perilous”). Sense of “characterized by very precise, conscientious attention to details” is a semantic loan from French méticuleux.

  1. learned borrowing from meticulōsus — “full of fear, timid, fearful, terrible, frightful

Definitions

  1. Characterized by very precise, conscientious attention to details.

    • meticulous search
    • meticulous investigation
    • meticulous knowledge
  2. Timid, fearful, overly cautious.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at meticulous. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01meticulous02overly03superficially04superficial05examined06examine07carefully08meticulously

A definitional loop anchored at meticulous. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

8 hops · closes at meticulous

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA