fastidious
Americanadjective
-
excessively particular, critical, or demanding; hard to please.
a fastidious eater.
-
requiring or characterized by excessive care or delicacy; painstaking.
adjective
-
very critical; hard to please
-
excessively particular about details
-
exceedingly delicate; easily disgusted
Related Words
See particular.
Other Word Forms
- fastidiously adverb
- fastidiousness noun
- hyperfastidious adjective
- hyperfastidiously adverb
- hyperfastidiousness noun
- nonfastidious adjective
- nonfastidiously adverb
- nonfastidiousness noun
- overfastidious adjective
- overfastidiously adverb
- overfastidiousness noun
- ultrafastidious adjective
- ultrafastidiously adverb
- ultrafastidiousness noun
- unfastidious adjective
- unfastidiously adverb
- unfastidiousness noun
Etymology
Origin of fastidious
First recorded in 1375–1425; late Middle English, from Latin fastīdiōsus “squeamish,” from fastīdi(um) “lack of appetite, disgust” (perhaps from fastu(s) “pride, conceit” + -tīdium, combining form of taedium tedium ) + -ōsus -ous
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
If there is a consistency to his work, it is that of cool, fastidious stylishness, in which the particulars of site, client and program were the dominant factors, and not the personality of the architect.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 28, 2025
But it narrows some of the fastidious distancing that there's been between what had happened at the shut down News of the World and the Sun.
From BBC • Jan. 22, 2025
The play, about a fanciful tour guide of a dull and stately English country house who runs into conflict with a factually fastidious official at the historic property, was almost immaterial.
From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 27, 2024
Ash was fastidious about maintaining a treatment diary.
From Salon • Dec. 7, 2023
Both, for example, were fastidious, very attentive to hygiene and the condition of their fingernails.
From "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
