hypersnickety

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

hypersnickety (HEYE-per-sni-keh-tee) - adj., excessively over-particular.


A colorful nonce-word coined from persnickety (over-particular) by replacing the per- with hyper- to crank the fussiness up to eleven. Persnickety is an alteration of Scottish pernickety, of unknown origin, but note that in Scottish dialects per- is often an "expressive prefix," as one dictionary puts it, or in other words an intensifier. I'm finding no instance of hypersnickety being used in the wild (except those traceable to the Worthless Word of the Day, where I found this) outside of a 2005 essay by Daniel Dennet, so it's possible he coined it. Clearly, it needs more love. For usage, I'll quote Dennett's:

Richard Dawkins is just as leery of idle armchair speculation and hypersnickety logic-chopping as any hard-bitten chemist or microbiologist

---L.

Comments

[exx-cecilegr.livejournal.com]

If it's good enough for Daniel Dennet, it's good enough for me! :D I'll definitely try giving this word some love in my immediate future.

[james0289.livejournal.com]

Why would anyone want to bite a chemist or microbiologist?

I'm doing my dissertation on microfossils - I'll have to watch out.

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

:-)

Hypersnickety

[brassknight86.livejournal.com]

That is going to be worth some love-- especially since I am behind in NaNoWriMo and I need to catch-up (stupid job interviews!)

One of my characters is quite stickler. Oh yeah... she's hypersnickety!

[nerdfury.livejournal.com]

Persnickety is a colloquialism of the Scottish pernickety, thought to be a childish onomatopoeia of 'particular.' I found eight instances of use in history.

Hypersnickety, however, doesn't exist in the OED at all. Or any form of it, even!