exactitude

EnglishEdit

EtymologyEdit

From French exactitude, from Latin exactus, perfect passive participle of exigō (“demand, claim as due" or "measure by a standard, weigh, test”), from ex (“out”) + agō (“drive”).

NounEdit

exactitude (countable and uncountable, plural exactitudes)

Exactness, accuracy; attention to small details.
- 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 44, [1]
  […] when 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, An Outcast of the Islands, Chapter 4, [2]
  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, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Appendix: The Principles of Newspeak [3]
  In Newspeak, euphony outweighed every consideration other than exactitude of meaning.