adjective
painstaking
PAYNZ-tay-kihng
adjective
1
Done with great care and thorough attention to detail.
"Restoring the painting required painstaking work over several months."
"Her painstaking research uncovered documents no one else had found."
How to Use Painstaking
Learner’s notesIn plain EnglishExtremely careful and thorough, often to the point of being slow.
Common pairings
painstaking detail
painstaking research
painstaking effort
Word Forms
more painstaking comparative, painstakings plural, most painstaking superlative
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Restoring the painting required _____ work over several months.
Etymology
Built from "pains" (effort) plus "taking," from the phrase "take pains." Because it's commonly pronounced as if it were "pain-staking," some speakers mistakenly assume it relates to a stake rather than to careful effort.