exactitude

exactitude

English

Etymology

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

• IPA^(key): /ɪɡˈzæktɪt(j)uːd/

• Audio (Swindon, England)

  (file)

Noun

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 57395299:

     [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 558805776, 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 690663892; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001, page 280:

     In Newspeak, euphony outweighed every consideration other than exactitude of meaning.

Related terms

• exact

Translations

attention to small details — See also translations at accuracy

Bulgarian: прецизност (bg) (preciznost), акуратност (bg) (akuratnost) Catalan: exactitud (ca) f, justesa f Esperanto: precizeco French: exactitude (fr) f Galician: exactitude (gl) f Irish: beachtaíocht f, beaichte f Portuguese: exatidão (pt) f Spanish: exactitud (es) f

References

1. Douglas Harper (2001–2023), “exactitude”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

Further reading

• exactitude in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911
• exactitude at OneLook Dictionary Search

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French

Etymology

exact +‎ -itude

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɛɡ.zak.ti.tyd/

• Audio (France)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -yd
• Homophone: exactitudes

Noun

exactitude f (plural exactitudes)

1. exactitude, accuracy

Descendants

• → English: exactitude

Further reading

• “exactitude”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.