Dainty vs Punctilious - What's the difference?
dainty | punctilious | Related terms |
(obsolete) Esteem, honour.
A delicacy.
* 1719 , (Daniel Defoe), (Robinson Crusoe)
* (William Cowper)
(Canada, Prairies and northwestern Ontario) A fancy cookie, pastry, or square served at a social event (usually plural).
(obsolete)
(obsolete) Excellent; valuable, fine.
*, II.13:
Elegant; delicately small and pretty.
* Milton
*
, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=1
, passage=However, with the dainty volume my quondam friend sprang into fame. At the same time he cast off the chrysalis of a commonplace existence.}}
Fastidious and fussy, especially when eating.
* Francis Bacon
* Shakespeare
Strictly attentive to detail; meticulous or fastidious, particularly to codes or conventions.
Precise or scrupulous; finicky or nitpicky.
* 2009 , Ronnie Cann, Ruth Kempson and Eleni Gregoromichelaki, Semantics: an introduction to meaning in language
Dainty is a related term of punctilious.
As adjectives the difference between dainty and punctilious
is that dainty is (obsolete) excellent; valuable, fine while punctilious is strictly attentive to detail; meticulous or fastidious, particularly to codes or conventions.As a noun dainty
is (obsolete) esteem, honour.dainty
English
Noun
(dainties)- my case was deplorable enough, yet I had great cause for thankfulness that I was not driven to any extremities for food, but had rather plenty, even to dainties .
- [A table] furnished plenteously with bread, / And dainties , remnants of the last regale.
- (Ben Jonson)
Adjective
(er)- Heliogabalus the most dissolute man of the world, amidst his most riotous sensualities, intended, whensoever occasion should force him to it, to have a daintie death.
- Those dainty limbs which nature lent / For gentle usage and soft delicacy.
- They were a fine and dainty people.
- And let us not be dainty of leave taking, / But shift away.
Synonyms
* neat * petiteReferences
*punctilious
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- With a punctilious slap of the gloves, the duel was now inevitable.
- Of course, humans do not treat time in such a punctilious fashion.