Fastidious \Fas*tid"i*ous\, a. [L. fastidiosus disdainful, fr.
fastidium loathing, aversion, perh. fr. fastus arrogance (of
uncertain origin) + taedium loathing. Cf. Tedious, Fash.]
Difficult to please; delicate to a fault; suited with
difficulty; squeamish; as, a fastidious mind or ear; a
fastidious appetite.
[1913 Webster]
Proud youth ! fastidious of the lower world. --Young.
Syn: Squeamish; critical; overnice; difficult; punctilious.
Usage: Fastidious, Squeamish. We call a person fastidious
when his taste or feelings are offended by trifling
defects or errors; we call him squeamish when he is
excessively nice or critical on minor points, and also
when he is overscrupulous as to questions of duty.
"Whoever examines his own imperfections will cease to
be fastidious; whoever restrains his caprice and
scrupulosity will cease to be squeamish." --Crabb. --
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
fastidious
adj 1: giving and careful attention to detail; hard to please;
excessively concerned with cleanliness; "a fastidious
and incisive intellect"; "fastidious about personal
cleanliness" [ant: unfastidious]
2: having complicated nutritional requirements; especially
growing only in special artificial cultures; "fastidious
microorganisms"; "certain highly specialized xerophytes
are extremely exacting in their requirements" [syn: exacting]
[ant: unfastidious]
WordNet (r) 2.0
99 Moby Thesaurus words for "fastidious":
accurate, appreciative, bleached, bright, careful, censorious,
choicy, choosy, civilized, clean, cleanly, conscientious, critical,
cultivated, cultured, dainty, delicate, differential, difficult,
dirt-free, discriminate, discriminating, discriminative,
distinctive, distinguishing, elegant, exact, exacting, fair, fine,
finical, finicky, fresh, fussy, graceful, gracile, gracious,
hypercritical, immaculate, kosher, meticulous, nice, nit-picking,
nonpolluted, of cleanly habits, overconscientious, overscrupulous,
particular, perfectionistic, picky, polished, precise,
precisianistic, priggish, prudish, punctilious, punctual, pure,
puristic, puritanic, refined, religious, ritually pure, scrupulous,
selective, sensitive, shiny, smut-free, smutless, sophisticated,
spotless, squeamish, stainless, strict, subtle, sweet, tactful,
tahar, tender-conscienced, tubbed, unadulterated, unbesmirched,
unblemished, unblotted, undefiled, unmuddied, unpolluted,
unsmirched, unsmudged, unsoiled, unspotted, unstained, unsullied,
untainted, untarnished, well-scrubbed, well-washed, white,
whitened
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
exacting
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