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”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɪɡˈzæktɪt(j)uːd/

• Audio (Southern 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:

     [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.

Related terms

• exact

Translations

attention to small details — see also 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, cruinneas m
• Portuguese: exatidão (pt) f
• Spanish: exactitud (es) f

Further reading

• “exactitude”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “exactitude”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

French

Etymology

From 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.