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assiduous

UK/əˈsɪdjuːəs/US/əˈsɪd͡ʒu.əs/
adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,633 of 15,258leans writtenformal · an editor’s judgement

Assiduous means working with steady careful attention. Not brilliant — thorough, and every single time.

It takes in. The word is formal and it is a real compliment in a reference, so an assiduous researcher checks everything and an assiduous note-taker misses nothing. There is a slightly ironic use about persistence, since assiduous attention from a journalist or a suitor means they will not go away. The adverb assiduously usually attaches to avoided, which is a nice piece of English understatement.

Definitions of assiduous

  1. 1adjectiveassiduousShowing steady careful attention to a task.C2

    “She was assiduous in checking every reference.”

Where it comes from

Assiduous is sitting at it. Latin assidēre meant to sit down to a task, ad plus sedēre, to sit, so diligence is measured here by how long you stay in the chair.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *sed-

  2. Latin

    assiduus

  3. English, today

    assiduous

Built from

  • assidere · Latin — to sit down to
  • ad- · Latin — to
  • sedere · Latin — to sit

A Latin assiduus, from assidere (“to sit down to”), from ad- (“to”) + sedere (“to sit”). Compare sedulous. Cognate (via assidere) to assess.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 17 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

assiduous in the wild

  • However, his assiduous work on the collections of the British Museum had great significance.

    Francis Walker (entomologist)

  • Chaui is one of the founding members of Workers' Party and an assiduous critic of the capitalist model.

    Marilena de Souza Chaui

  • Fulk's assiduous enthusiasm in carrying out his mission led to rumours concerning the usage made of the monetary sums it produced.

    Fulk of Neuilly

  • Samuel Clarke or Clark was an English Nonconformist clergyman known as an assiduous annotator of the Bible.

    Samuel Clarke (annotator)

  • By assiduous work he gained some experience and employment in his profession, though he never attained any great reputation.

    James Hopwood the Elder

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.