Kim Marcus
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If you’re a reader of a certain age (say, a Boomer, Gen Xer, or even a Xennial), you may remember cheeky television commercials featuring Morris, a finicky housecat who only eats a certain brand of cat food. (Morris is still featured on product labels.) Morris's tastes in cuisine are not only very particular, but very fine as well, and that's appropriate given the origin of finicky. The word came about as an alteration of finicking, itself an alteration of another adjective, finical. It's believed that finical derives from the adjective fine.
Synonyms
Examples of finicky in a Sentence
Mike Desimone and Jeff Jenssen, Robb Report, 25 Apr. 2024
Using less water and using a drone to fertilize are new techniques that Van is trying and Vietnam hopes will help solve a paradox at the heart of growing rice: The finicky crop isn’t just vulnerable to climate change but also contributes uniquely to it.
—Aniruddha Ghosal, Fortune Asia, 23 Apr. 2024
Still, this little morsel won’t intimidate finicky or small fish like the bigger baits might.
—Shaye Baker, Field & Stream, 17 Apr. 2024
The finicky politics of all three districts also reflect their common identity as once-prosperous industrial hubs whose economies have declined as manufacturing jobs have moved abroad.
—Karissa Waddick, USA TODAY, 16 Apr. 2024
By modern standards, the 255 horsepower (or, in some versions, 240 horsepower) that the 1970s 308s produced isn’t much, and the cars also had a finicky five-speed manual transmission, but the 308 endures as an object that is, quite simply, one of the classiest-looking Ferraris ever made.
—Erik Shilling, Robb Report, 12 Apr. 2024
Semiconductor chips are notorious for their finicky electrical properties and are more sensitive to light, dust, and particle contaminants.
—Sasha Rogelberg, Fortune, 3 Apr. 2024
Casual Maxi Dress Italians love a good maxi dress for the spring that can be accessorized with layered jewelry and paired with open or close-toed shoes, depending on spring’s notoriously finicky weather.
—Asia London Palomba, Travel + Leisure, 27 Mar. 2024
Some are quite easy to use while others can be more finicky and require some muscle power.
—Maya Polton, Better Homes & Gardens, 8 Feb. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'finicky.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near finicky
Cite this Entry
“Finicky.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/finicky. Accessed 29 Apr. 2024.
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