Meticulous means very careful about small details. The word began as a Latin word for fearful, and the careful meaning came back later.
Wait... Was It Once About Fear?
Yes. Meticulous comes from a Latin word that meant fearful. In the 1500s, English used it with that old meaning: someone meticulous was timid. The careful, detail-loving meaning we know today came back into English much later, and it stayed.
Always about details? ❌
Started out as "afraid"? ✅
What Does Meticulous Mean?
If you're meticulous, you pay great attention to small details and try to get everything exactly right.
My uncle is meticulous about his garden: every row of plants is exactly the same distance apart.
🔊 Pronunciation
muh-TIK-yuh-lus
The stress is on the second part: TIK. The ending sounds like -yuh-lus.
🗣️ Natural Examples
She is meticulous about her homework, and her notebooks look like they've been ironed.
The baker was meticulous, measuring every ingredient twice.
Dad is a meticulous packer, so our suitcases look like a jigsaw puzzle.
"You've been very meticulous," said the teacher, looking at the map I had coloured.
The cat is meticulous about washing, even when nobody is watching.
🛠️ How to Use It
Meticulous is a positive, slightly formal word. You can use it in school writing, at work and in conversation.
- It's an adjective: a meticulous person, meticulous notes.
- It's followed by about or in: meticulous about details, meticulous in his work.
- It's praise, but it can also hint at someone who is a bit fussy, so tone matters.
🤝 Common Word Partners
- meticulous about (details)
- a meticulous plan
- meticulous care
- meticulous records
- meticulously organised
- meticulous attention to detail
👨👩👧 Word Family
- meticulous (adjective): extremely careful.
- meticulously (adverb): in a very careful way. She meticulously checked every answer.
- meticulousness (noun): the quality of being meticulous.
👯 Similar and Related Words
- careful: the everyday word.
- thorough: doing every part of a job completely.
- precise: exact and accurate.
- fussy: too concerned about small things, usually in a negative way.
⚠️ Common Mistakes
Which word is right?
❌ He was meticulously person.
✅ He was a meticulous person. (Meticulous is an adjective. Meticulously is the adverb.)
Pronunciation.
❌ meh-ti-CU-lous
✅ muh-TIK-yuh-lus
💬 In a Conversation
Mia: Why is Sam rewriting the whole page?
Dad: One letter was a bit wobbly.
Mia: That's very meticulous.
Dad: It's either meticulous or bedtime.
🕵️ Where Does It Come From?
This is the OddLingo part: meticulous changed its meaning almost completely.
What we can say:
- The word comes from Latin meticulosus, "fearful", built on metus, "fear". The origin of metus itself is unknown.
- In English, it's recorded in the 1530s meaning "fearful, timid". Etymonline says that sense is now obsolete.
- The modern meaning, "very careful about details", entered English again in the 1800s, probably by way of French. Dictionaries give slightly different dates for that.
So a word for being afraid of getting something wrong turned into a word for taking great care not to get it wrong. It's tempting to link the two, since fear of mistakes can make a person very careful, but that's our guess, not something the dictionaries say.
💡 The OddLingo Trick
Think of meticulous as "afraid of mistakes, so careful about everything". The Latin fear is still hiding in the word, and it points to someone who checks, checks again, and checks once more.