hair-splittingly precise
- adjective
- Informal
:
excesivamente preciso
- The accountant was hair-splittingly precise in preparing the financial statements, checking every number twice.
Examples
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Don't be hair-splittingly precise about the details!
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Wow! That explanation was hair-splittingly precise!
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Her attention to detail is impressive—she is hair-splittingly precise in her work.
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While his hair-splittingly precise instructions, although thorough, made the process much slower.
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Her attention to detail is impressive—she is hair-splittingly precise in her work.
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The accountant was hair-splittingly precise in preparing the financial statements, checking every number twice.
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His hair-splittingly precise analysis of the data revealed patterns that others had missed.
Synonyms
106
4.4
Careful about small details and hard to please
58
8.6
Being very careful about small details
7
7.0
Needing a lot of care and attention to small details
4
5.0
Having too many small details makes it look crowded
4
9.8
Being very picky about small details
Being very careful about small details in a way that annoys others
Too focused on small unimportant details in a discussion
Being more exact than needed
Paying too much attention to small, unimportant details
Too worried about small details and hard to please
Careful about small details and hard to please
Careful and picky about small details and choices
Choosy about small details and what they accept
Very careful and exact but too detailed to follow
Antonyms
How Precise
- Informal
124
3.7
163
3.0
524
3.2
373
1.6
Surface Forms
Morphology
hair-splittingly + precise
The adverb 'hair-splittingly' derives from the idiom 'split hairs' and evokes making extremely fine or nitpicky distinctions, so when combined with 'precise' it yields 'excessively detailed'. The connection to the constituent words (hair + splitting + precise) gives a partial clue about extreme minuteness, but the idiomatic base and the unusual adverbial form mean learners without exposure may not fully infer the exact evaluative sense.
Etymology
The phrase hair-splittingly precise comes from the image of trying to split a single hair, something very thin, which gives a picture of a very small, exact action. So it means 'too detailed' or 'very exact'.