English Dictionary

FASTIDIOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does fastidious mean? 

FASTIDIOUS (adjective)
  The adjective FASTIDIOUS has 2 senses:

1. giving careful attention to detail; hard to please; excessively concerned with cleanlinessplay

2. having complicated nutritional requirements; especially growing only in special artificial culturesplay

  Familiarity information: FASTIDIOUS used as an adjective is rare.


 Dictionary entry details 


FASTIDIOUS (adjective)


Sense 1

Meaning:

Giving careful attention to detail; hard to please; excessively concerned with cleanliness

Context example:

fastidious about personal cleanliness

Similar:

choosey; choosy (difficult to please)

dainty; nice; overnice; prissy; squeamish (excessively fastidious and easily disgusted)

finical; finicky; fussy; particular; picky (exacting especially about details)

meticulous (marked by extreme care in treatment of details)

pernickety; persnickety (characterized by excessive precision and attention to trivial details)

old-maidish; old-womanish (primly fastidious)

Also:

refined ((used of persons and their behavior) cultivated and genteel)

tidy (marked by order and cleanliness in appearance or habits)

Antonym:

unfastidious (marked by an absence of due or proper care or attention to detail; not concerned with cleanliness)

Derivation:

fastidiousness (the trait of being meticulous about matters of taste or style)


Sense 2

Meaning:

Having complicated nutritional requirements; especially growing only in special artificial cultures

Synonyms:

exacting; fastidious

Context example:

certain highly specialized xerophytes are extremely exacting in their requirements

Domain category:

microbiology (the branch of biology that studies microorganisms and their effects on humans)

Antonym:

unfastidious (not exacting in nutritional requirements)


 Context examples 


She meant 'facinating', but as Grace didn't know the exact meaning of either word, fastidious sounded well and made a good impression.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I would not be so fastidious as you are, cried Mr. Bingley, for a kingdom!

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

A fastidious delicacy had prevented him.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

My dear cousin (sitting down by her), you have a better right to be fastidious than almost any other woman I know; but will it answer?

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

And he was really a very pleasing young man, a young man whom any woman not fastidious might like.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Is Mr. Rochester an exacting, fastidious sort of man?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He is fastidious and will have an affectation of his own.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

This species is motile using peritrichous flagella (most strains), non-spore forming, noncapsulated, moderately fastidious, oxidase, catalase and urease positive, indole negative, reduces nitrate and nitrite, nonhemolytic, not susceptible to penicillin, and does not produce hydrogen sulfide, pigment or odors, hydrolyze gelatin and ferment or oxidize carbohydrates.

(Oligella ureolytica, NCI Thesaurus)

This species is nonmotile, non-spore forming, noncapsulated oxidase and catalase positive, urease and indole negative, reduces nitrite, but not nitrate, nonhemolytic, moderately fastidious, susceptible to penicillin, and does not produce pigment, odors or hydrogen sulfide, ferment or oxidize carbohydrates, or hydrolyze gelatin.

(Oligella urethralis, NCI Thesaurus)

You have been tutored and refined by books and retirement from the world, and you are therefore somewhat fastidious; but this only renders you the more fit to appreciate the extraordinary merits of this wonderful man.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)



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