punctilio

From Italian puntiglio, or Spanish puntillo, diminutive from Latin pūnctum (“point”).

• IPA^(key): /pʌŋkˈtɪliˌoʊ/

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punctilio (countable and uncountable, plural punctilios)

1. A fine point in exactness of conduct, ceremony or procedure.
   • 1768, Mr. Yorick [pseudonym; Laurence Sterne], A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, volume II, London: T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, , →OCLC, page 68:

     […] –but, a-propos, ſaid he—Shakeſpear is full of great things—He forgot a ſmall punctillio of announcing your name—it puts you under a neceſſity of doing it yourſelf.

   • 1830, Joseph Plumb Martin, “Ch. IX”, in A Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier:

     The country was rigorous in exacting my compliance to my engagements to a punctilio, but equally careless in performing her contracts with me; and why so?

   • 1874, Thomas Hardy, chapter I, in Far from the Madding Crowd. , volume II, London: Smith, Elder & Co., , →OCLC:

     It was only whispered, for something unutterably mournful no less than distressing in this spectacle of a man showing himself to be so entirely the vane of a passion enervated the feminine instinct for punctilios.

   • 1884, Henry James, “The Path of Duty”, in The English Illustrated Magazine, 2(15): 240-256:

     [I]t seemed strange to be engaged to so charming a girl and yet go through with it as if it were simply a social duty. If one had n't been in love with her at first, one ought to have been at the end of a week or two. If Ambrose Tester was not (and to me he did n't pretend to be), he carried it off, as I have said, better than I should have expected. He was a gentleman, and he behaved like a gentleman, with the added punctilio, I think, of being sorry for his betrothed.

   • 1891 August 2 (date written; published 1891), Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “At the Shrine of St. Wagner”, in What Is Man? And Other Essays, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers, published May 1917, page 216:

     [I shall] thereafter call him Waggner as per German custom, for I feel entirely friendly now. The minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless punctilios and pronounce his name right!

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, , →OCLC:

     All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, […]

   • 1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library, paperback edition, London: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 254:

     Covert gestures of kindness saved me from trouble, or explained the punctilio of some futile but unavoidable chore.

2. Strictness in observance of formalities.
   • 1838, [Letitia Elizabeth] Landon (indicated as editor), chapter I, in Duty and Inclination: , volume II, London: Henry Colburn, , →OCLC, pages 255-256:

     Alas! she little conceived that, though without any apparent levity or disregard to the world's censure, yet from an obsequiousness and acquiescence to the will and pleasure of others, into what thoughtless indiscretion and want of due punctilio she might be led; rendering her, in the case of Philimore and Oriana, by favouring them in their secret union, a most dangerous intimate!

   • 1921 October, Maxwell H. H. Macartney, “An Ex-Enemy in Berlin to-Day”, in The Atlantic‎:

     This rudeness and official punctilio, however, brought forth a storm of protest from my fellow voyagers.

   • 1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, published 1959, →OCLC:

     When you sow your peas, when you sow your beans, when you sow your potatoes, when you sow your carrots, your turnips, your parsnips and other root vegetables, do you do so with punctilio? No, but rapidly you open a trench, a rough and ready line, not quite straight, nor yet quite crooked, […]

• punctiliar
• punctilious

• ponticuli, unpolitic