If you’ve ever met someone who is overly concerned with small details, perhaps even in an irritating way, you now have the perfect word to describe them—persnickety.
According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, persnickety means “worrying too much about details that are not important.” Meanwhile, the Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “giving too much attention to small details that are not important in a way that annoys other people.”
But what about its origins? Let’s explore the intriguing etymology behind this word.
Fascinating history
Unlike its definition, the history of persnickety is anything but precise. According to Merriam-Webster, persnickety describes people who like things neat and orderly. Ironically, the word itself has a rather muddled origin.
The term first appeared in the English language in the late 19th century as a variation of pernickety, a word with the same meaning that dates back to the early 1800s. Beyond that, linguistic experts can only speculate about its deeper origins.
Some theories suggest pernickety may have evolved from a child’s pronunciation of particular, while others believe the nick part of the word stems from its association with knick-knack. Another possibility is that the Latin prefix per-—meaning “thoroughly”—played a role in its formation. However, no theory has been conclusively proven.
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