PAINSTAKING

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does painstaking mean? 

• PAINSTAKING (adjective)
  The adjective PAINSTAKING has 1 sense:

1. characterized by extreme care and great effort

  Familiarity information: PAINSTAKING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PAINSTAKING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Characterized by extreme care and great effort

Synonyms:

conscientious; painstaking; scrupulous

Context example:

scrupulous attention to details

Similar:

careful (exercising caution or showing care or attention)

Derivation:

painstakingness (the trait of being painstaking and careful)

 Context examples 

She inspected it with painstaking care, while One Eye, who had returned, stood in the entrance and patiently watched her.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Again the other cleared his throat and spoke with painstaking and judicial slowness.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

I am practically industrious—painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour—but besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

After painstaking measurements from multiple instruments at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the team led by Tom Seccull of Queen’s University Belfast in the UK was able to measure the composition of the anomalous Kuiper Belt Object 2004 EW95, and thus determine that it is a carbonaceous asteroid.

(Exiled Asteroid Discovered in Outer Reaches of Solar System, ESO)

He ate the fish raw, masticating with painstaking care, for the eating was an act of pure reason.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)