Some people check every detail twice; others barely look. This topic gives you words for both. Six of them describe great care (one of them, fastidious, often pokes fun at too much of it), and four describe care that is missing.
Key idea
Careful: meticulous, scrupulous, diligent, assiduous, fastidious, punctilious. Careless: negligent, remiss, cursory, perfunctory. The careless words differ in how they fall short: negligent and remiss fail a duty, cursory is hasty, and perfunctory is done without interest.
The ten words
Common mistake
scrupulous can mean careful about details or careful about right and wrong. cursory (hasty) has nothing to do with cursing: it comes from Latin for running.
| word | what kind of care | you might hear |
|---|---|---|
| meticulous | care with every detail | a meticulous drawing |
| scrupulous | care with details, or with right and wrong | a scrupulous judge |
| diligent | steady hard work | a diligent student |
| assiduous | attention that never lets up | assiduous practice |
| fastidious | fussy, hard to please | a fastidious eater |
| punctilious | the exact rules of behavior | a punctilious host |
| negligent | not taking the care you owe | a negligent guard |
| remiss | slack about a duty | I would be remiss if… |
| cursory | hasty, a quick look | a cursory glance |
| perfunctory | routine, without interest | a perfunctory nod |
Scrupulous has two sides. A scrupulous editor checks every comma (care with details); a scrupulous shopkeeper never cheats a customer (care about right and wrong). Its opposite, unscrupulous, almost always means dishonest. And cursory has nothing to do with cursing: it comes from Latin cursor, a runner, so a cursory look runs right past things.