British word of the day


pernickety [pəˈnɪkɪtɪ] US, persnickety adj Informal

1. excessively precise and attentive to detail; fussy

2. (of a task) requiring close attention; exacting

[originally Scottish, of unknown origin]

Sister Thompson was notorious for her ill-temper and pernickety ways…

I wasn’t sure this counted as a ‘Brit word’, wondering if retro Harlequin had committed a typo. But no, the interwebnets decreed otherwise. Just N, no S. Got it.

I am so tempted to begin using it but Mijnheer van Vorhees is already a little creeped out when I call rain boots ‘wellies’ so I think I’ve exceeded my eccentric Brit-speak quota for the year. (Naturally, his eight years at a Canadian company mean that PRO-cess and PRO-gress have passed under our familial limbo stick but one too many trips to the loo and suddenly we’ve got a federal case on our hands…)

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