fastidiousness
extreme detail-care or hard-to-please precision
Root
- fastid: disgust, squeamishness, or hard-to-please care
Other words with the fastid root
- fastidious: very hard to please; extremely attentive to detail
Fastid carries a disgust or flinch feeling. Fastidiousness is detail-care with a shudder behind it.
Her fastidiousness made the lab safer, though it made every checklist twice as long.
Fastidiousness is not ordinary care. Care can be calm. Fastidiousness often feels almost physical: a tiny flaw makes the person flinch.
That is why the word can be praise or complaint. In a lab it may protect people; at dinner it may exhaust them.