Got to admit, I hadn't heard of 'Persnickety' ....... it's not even in Chambers!
...... The story behind my use of the word, without the 's' - (and it's inclusion in my sig!) - is as follows:-
In the 60's, I was working at Ferranti's, - the Chief Planning Engineer was part Engineer, part Gentleman,
(ie,... he wore a bow tie! - which was not part of your average engineer's wardrobe!) - It was in the early days of computer controlled machine tools, and one of his favourite comments was that computers were ... 'super-pernickety idiots!'
He was of course quite right, - the phrase has stuck with me ever since, - and to this day, I can not think of a better description of a computer!
To those who may have thought of computers as something relatively new, - think again! - My dad was a builder working for a Manchester firm. I remember him talking of working on a building where a large room was filled with racks of valve equipment. - In fact, it was what I have since learnt, was the very first computer, at what is now UMIST, and no, - it didn't belong to Bill Gates!
EDIT: just found this in Roget's Thesaurus .....
pernickety or persnickety (adjective)
attentive: close, minute, nice, meticulous, particular, pernickety, punctilious, accurate
fastidious: punctilious, painstaking, conscientious, overconscientious, critical, hypercritical, overcritical, fussy, pernickety, hard to please, fault-finding, censorious, disapproving
The Original Roget's Longman Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (British Version) is licensed from Longman Group UK Limited. Copyright © 1994 Longman Group UK Limited. All rights reserved.
................. sounds like me!
