Picky means very hard to please over small details. A picky eater, don't be picky, picky about wording.
It is mild and informal, and picky eater is the standard phrase for a child who refuses most food. It differs from fussy only in tone, and both are gentler than particular, which sounds like a compliment and often is not.
1adjectivepickyVery hard to please over small details.
“He's so picky about food that he won't eat anything green.”
picky is a quality.
Proto-Indo-European
*bew-
Proto-Germanic
*pikkōną — to pick, peck, prick, knock
Proto-West Germanic
*pikkōn
Old English
*piccian
Middle English
piken
English
pick
English, today
picky
Built from
From pick + -y. pick comes from Middle English piken, picken, pikken, from Old English piccian, pīcian (attested in pīcung (“a pricking”)), and pīcan, pȳcan (“to pick, prick, pluck”), both from Proto-West Germanic pikkōn, from Proto-Germanic pikkōną (“to pick, peck, prick, knock”), from Proto-Indo-European bew-, bu- (“to make a dull, hollow sound”). a doublet of pitch and peck. Cognate with Dutch pikken (“to pick”), German picken (“to pick, peck”), Old Norse pikka, pjakka (whence Icelandic pikka (“to pick, prick”), Swedish picka (“to pick, peck”)). Compare also German Low German puken (“to pick out, rip out, pull away, extract”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA