Definition

1. Adjective:
   • Meticulous / Painstaking: Showing great attention to detail; very careful and precise.
   • Fussy / Nitpicking: Excessively concerned with minor details, sometimes to an annoying degree.

Usage Examples

• Adjective:
  • Cô ấy làm việc rất tỉ mẩn. (She works very meticulously.)
  • Anh ấy có tính tỉ mẩn, luôn kiểm tra mọi thứ hai lần. (He has a fussy character, always checking everything twice.)
  • Người thợ tỉ mẩn khắc từng chi tiết nhỏ. (The painstaking artisan carved every small detail.)

Advanced Usage

• The word often describes a person's character or the manner in which a task is performed, emphasizing thoroughness that can be either admirable or excessively careful.

Variants and Related Words

• Tỉ mỉ (adj): A more common synonym meaning meticulous, thorough, detailed.
  • Bản báo cáo này rất tỉ mỉ. (This report is very detailed.)

Synonyms

• Meticulous: Showing great attention to detail.
• Painstaking: Done with great care and thoroughness.
• Fussy: Overly concerned with minor details.
• Nitpicking: Looking for small, unimportant errors or faults.

Related Idioms

• While "tỉ mẩn" itself is not typically part of a fixed idiom, it conveys a similar idea to the English expressions "dot the i's and cross the t's" (to be meticulous) or "split hairs" (to nitpick).