ISEE/SSAT Vocabulary BuilderWordsPpunctilious
ISEE/SSAThard
punctilious
Meaning: extremely careful about details, rules, or proper behavior
punctilious in a sentence
How punctilious is used in real sentences:
The punctilious editor noticed every misplaced comma and inconsistent heading.
No one forgot a lab step when Priya, always punctilious, checked the instructions line by line.
“Inside the burn, however, she became punctilious about flag placement and sample labels because a misplaced plot could distort decades of comparison.”
— from the passage The Patient Burn
“Mara, punctilious even under hostile questioning, named every sampling date and distinguished what the data proved from what they merely suggested.”
— from the passage The Case She Carried
“Vane's notebooks recorded a punctilious routine.”
— from the passage The Fault in the Bronze
Synonyms for punctilious
Other words for punctilious — meticulous, scrupulous, precise and fastidious — carry the same meaning.
Antonyms of punctilious
Words that mean the opposite of punctilious:
- careless
- lax
- negligent
- casual
Where it comes from
From Italian puntiglio 'fine point', from Latin punctum 'point'.
Word parts
- punct/pung — point; prick
punctilious: punct (point) + -il (small) + -ious (characterized by)
Memory hook
Punctilious people care about every point and punctuation mark.
Practice punctilious in the app