exactitude

Noun

exactitude (countable and uncountable, plural exactitudes)

1. Attention to small details; accuracy.
   • [W]hen making a passage from one feeding-ground to another, the sperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct—say, rather, secret intelligence from the Deity—mostly swim in veins, as they are called; continuing their way along a given ocean-line with such undeviating exactitude, that no ship...1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter XLIV, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
   • He paced stiffly, looking with extreme exactitude at Lingard's face; looking neither to the right nor to the left but at the face only, as if there was nothing in the world but those features familiar and dreaded; […]1896, Joseph Conrad, chapter IV, in An Outcast of the Islands, London: T. Fisher Unwin […], →OCLC, part IV, page 272

   Synonyms:

   exactness

   Antonyms:

   inexactitude