painstaking
Americanadjective
noun
adjective
Related Words
Painstaking, careful, meticulous, conscientious all describe persons or behavior demonstrating attention to detail and effective task performance. painstaking stresses diligent and assiduous attention to detail in achieving a desired objective: a painstaking technician; the painstaking editing of a manuscript. Careful , the most general in sense of these words, implies serious intent to perform well and accurately whatever task one has in hand: a careful housepainter; a careful study of the social structure of gangs. Meticulous suggests extreme attention to details, especially the most minute, coupled with an almost obsessive desire to avoid error: a meticulous silversmith, every detail finished to perfection; fussily meticulous about matching shoes and clothing. Conscientious stresses scrupulous effort to obey one's sense of moral obligation to perform tasks well: a conscientious public defender; a conscientious description of the robbery.
Other Word Forms
- painstakingly adverb
- painstakingness noun
Etymology
Origin of painstaking
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
His decades of painstaking research helped lead to a push in the 1990s for the Air Force to come clean on what it had been doing: testing spy balloons and recovering crash dummies.
At the same time, low-paid workers there have long been carrying out the unseen and painstaking task of manually categorising the vast amounts of data used to train the world's AI tools.
From BBC
Susan Stamatkin, 67, is making a painstaking list of every detail of her household before she has surgery at the end of March.
From MarketWatch
She would create multiple pictures of the same or similar subjects, refining her craft through painstaking repetition on her modest-sized canvases.
From BBC
Negotiations between Brussels and Canberra collapsed in 2023 after five years of painstaking discussions over a wide array of issues.
From Barron's
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
