Crossword clues for finical
finical
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Finical \Fin"i*cal\,
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[From Fine, a.] Affectedly fine; overnice; unduly particular; fastidious. ``Finical taste.''
--Wordsworth.The gross style consists in giving no detail, the finical in giving nothing else.
--Hazlitt.Syn: Finical, Spruce, Foppish.
Usage: These words are applied to persons who are studiously desirous to cultivate finery of appearance. One who is spruce is elaborately nice in dress; one who is finical shows his affectation in language and manner as well as in dress; one who is foppish distinguishes himself by going to the extreme of the fashion in the cut of his clothes, by the tawdriness of his ornaments, and by the ostentation of his manner. ``A finical gentleman clips his words and screws his body into as small a compass as possible, to give himself the air of a delicate person; a spruce gentleman strives not to have a fold wrong in his frill or cravat, nor a hair of his head to lie amiss; a foppish gentleman seeks . . . to render himself distinguished for finery.''
--Crab -- Fin"i*cal*ly, adv. -- Fin"i*cal*ness, n.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"fastidious, affecting extreme elegance in manners, taste, or speech," 1590s; see finicky. Related: finically; finicality; finick (v.), 1857.
Wiktionary
a. finicky, fastidious, overly precise or delicate.
WordNet
adj. exacting especially about details; "a finicky eater"; "fussy about clothes"; "very particular about how her food was prepared" [syn: finicky, fussy, particular]
Usage examples of "finical".
The imitations of mediaeval paper, thick, harsh, and dingy, and showing the marks of the wires upon which the fabric was couched, are preferred by men of letters for books and for correspondence, while highly polished modern plate papers, with surfaces much more glossy than any preparation of vellum, are now rejected by them as finical and effeminate.
He was extremely reluctant to cut the line, both on principle and because silk was a treacherous stuff to splice, and in time he had woven the whole into a spider's web, an extraordinarily intricate piece of rigging with cunning knots, stoppers and beckets, the whole designed to concentrate two men's strength on the raising of the left-hand side of the farther slab: although he was never still, to a watcher his work seemed endless, needlessly finical, obscure.