persnickety
/pɚˈsnɪ.kɪ.ti/adjective
persnickety is an adjective meaning “US standard form of pernickety” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-E-R-S-N-I-C-K-E-T-Y, and it appears about once in every 21 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does persnickety mean?
adjective
- 1
USUS standard form of pernickety.
I have just read the article in your issue for May 16 on dialectic English. The word tempest recalls the surprise I felt at the beginning of three years' residence on Cape Cod to hear the word used commonly as an exact synonym for thunderst
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce persnickety?
- /pɚˈsnɪ.kɪ.ti/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-persnickety.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of persnickety
- more persnickety comparative
- most persnickety superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is persnickety?
Persnickety appears about once in every 21 million words in written English, the 138,319th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does persnickety come from?
From Scots persnickety, whence also pernickety. More at pernickety.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).