What's the difference between meticulous and punctilious?

Meticulous


Definition:

  • (a.) Timid; fearful.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The catheter must be meticulously fixed to the skin to avoid its movement.
  • (2) Diagnosis and identification of the site of the leak is often inaccurate, even with meticulous care given to placing and removing the nasal pledgets.
  • (3) In one of Pruitt’s first official acts, for example, he overruled the recommendation of his own agency’s scientists, based on years of meticulous research, to ban a pesticide shown to cause nerve damage, one that poses a clear risk to children, farmworkers and rural drinking water supplies.
  • (4) For the management and prevention of the recurrent ascending infections long-term urinary disinfection and meticulous toilet of the external meatus are recommended.
  • (5) This higher-than-expected rate of positive cultures was probably related to the meticulous bacteriologic techniques used.
  • (6) Also, when using these drugs, one must often follow a meticulously graduated dosage regimen, while carefully monitoring the patient for toxic and potentially lethal side effects.
  • (7) Unlike posterior tympanoplasty, this technique makes it possible to meticulously remove the osteitic bone invariably found in the facial recess when there is infection of the retraction pocket.
  • (8) Recognize the high-risk patient and examine the oral cavity meticulously.
  • (9) Meticulous histologic examination of the resected specimens revealed no residual cancer cells.
  • (10) The only appropriate treatment of congenital facial and cervical C and F is surgery providing that the resection is meticulous with complete resection of the fistula in order to avoid relapse.
  • (11) Recurrences cannot always be avoided but the frequency can be reduced by meticulous removal of all diseased and normal connective tissue in this area.
  • (12) Specialist learning disability liaison nurse Jainab Desai is making meticulous checks of the complex arrangements to receive a tricky patient with learning disabilities, with staff of the day surgery unit at Royal Bolton hospital.
  • (13) All the patients underwent abdominal exploration, and CAGB was confirmed by the meticulous dissection of the entire extrahepatic biliary tree and the operative cholangiography.
  • (14) A meticulous review of the literature and several personal surgical cases confirms the view that only those diverticula causing evident symptoms or complications should be treated.
  • (15) The second patient was a 2-year-old female with anterior mediastinal and paratracheal masses and severe respiratory compromise, who was operated under general inhalation anesthesia and spontaneous breathing for biopsy of supraclavicular lymphadenopathy, after a meticulous preanesthetic evaluation.
  • (16) Meticulous handling of the graft (using a Goeller trephine and Tenon's traction sutures), filleting Tenon's capsule and avoiding cautery of the graft bed may minimize graft necrosis and atrophy.
  • (17) Their incidence could be reduced by more meticulous patient care.
  • (18) Meticulous attention to the cerebrospinal fluid draining system is needed in patients with a fistula to avoid the development of this unusual complication.
  • (19) It appears that early aggressive operation, and meticulous postoperative care, have contributed to the higher survival rate in recent years.
  • (20) The success of the modified technique depends upon meticulous methodology.

Punctilious


Definition:

  • (a.) Attentive to punctilio; very nice or exact in the forms of behavior, etiquette, or mutual intercourse; precise; exact in the smallest particulars.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It is a sorry reminder that physical evidence must be closeted with care and punctiliously marked for later courtroom uses.
  • (2) The attorney general, George Brandis, sprang to the defence of Heydon, saying the commissioner had an “absolutely stainless reputation for punctilious integrity” and his withdrawal from the event should be the end of the matter.
  • (3) John Prescott's department published an annual Opportunities for All report that punctiliously monitored these social targets: 48 out of 59 indicators improved.
  • (4) Young love; pageantry delivered punctiliously; and old love, too.
  • (5) All he can do – if, as he appears to, he shares the shock of other national leaders – is to join international efforts to establish what happened, even if the results may be unwelcome, and show a punctilious regard for due process.
  • (6) But France, too, must be punctilious about observing all judicial proprieties.
  • (7) Experts think authorities are likely to be punctilious in complying with legal requirements given the close scrutiny.
  • (8) Good-hearted, apparently punctilious people show bias without realising it and may well be taken back or affronted if anyone suggests they have acted unfairly.
  • (9) Photograph: Frank Martin It’s the same sense of fairness that means that, sometimes in the cracks, while writing about other things, he takes time to punctiliously acknowledge his influences – Alan Coren , for example, who pioneered so many of the techniques of short humour that Terry and I have filched over the years; or the glorious, overstuffed, heady thing that is Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and its compiler, t he Rev E Cobham Brewer , that most serendipitious of authors.
  • (10) Brandis disputed the description of the event as a fundraiser, saying Heydon had an “absolutely stainless reputation for punctilious integrity” and his withdrawal should be the end of the matter.
  • (11) Brandis defended Heydon in typically florid terms on Thursday: “He has an absolutely stainless reputation for punctilious integrity.” Yet this was the same man who, in what is regarded as his job application speech at a Quadrant dinner for Mary Gaudron’s vacancy, rather nastily attacked Sir Anthony Mason and the high court under his chief justiceship.
  • (12) Two obligatory conditions of effective surgery are emphasized: punctilious performance of all the particulars of the operation and postoperative cytostatic therapy.
  • (13) "Well, Andrew," he says, in that punctiliously courteous way Americans have of employing your name as if it's an honorific, "right at the moment, I'm chief justice of the Nevada Supreme Court."
  • (14) But the government has defended both the commission and the commissioner, with the attorney general, George Brandis, saying Heydon had an “absolutely stainless reputation for punctilious integrity” and his withdrawal from the event should be the end of the matter.