exactitude

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English

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Etymology

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From French exactitude, from exact, from Latin exactus, perfect passive participle of exigō (demand, claim as due" or "measure by a standard, weigh, test), from ex (out) + agō (drive).[1]

Pronunciation

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Noun

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exactitude (countable and uncountable, plural exactitudes)

  1. Attention to small details; accuracy.
    Synonym: exactness
    Antonym: inexactitude
    • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter XLIV, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
      [W]hen making a passage from one feeding-ground to another, the sperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct—say, rather, secret intelligence from the Deity—mostly swim in veins, as they are called; continuing their way along a given ocean-line with such undeviating exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by any chart, with one tithe of such marvellous precision.
    • 1896, Joseph Conrad, chapter IV, in An Outcast of the Islands, London: T. Fisher Unwin [], →OCLC, part IV, page 272:
      He paced stiffly, looking with extreme exactitude at Lingard's face; looking neither to the right nor to the left but at the face only, as if there was nothing in the world but those features familiar and dreaded; []
    • 1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], “Appendix. The Principles of Newspeak.”, in Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001, page 280:
      In Newspeak, euphony outweighed every consideration other than exactitude of meaning.
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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “exactitude”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

Further reading

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French

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Etymology

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From exact +‎ -itude.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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exactitude f (plural exactitudes)

  1. exactitude, accuracy

Descendants

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  • English: exactitude

Further reading

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