The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
METICULOUS
Definition of METICULOUS
adjective
Characterized by very precise, conscientious attention to details.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
Learned borrowing from Latin meticulōsus (“full of fear, timid, fearful, terrible, frightful”), from metus (“fear”) and -culōsus, extracted from perīculōsus (“perilous”). Sense of “characterized by very precise, conscientious attention to details” is a semantic loan from French méticuleux.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
2 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
5th
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
5.3%
of traced words share this origin (4,269)
branch · 12.8% of traced words
How it is built
Same root, METICULOUS · 1 relative in the game
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
METICULOUS in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 36 boards so far. 90 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 12, 1 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 158, 25 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 3 days.
First found by a player on Day 12, 1 June 2026.
Built from these letters
METICULOUS starts with M and ends with S. Sorted, its letters read CEILMOSTUU - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. U appears more than once.
Words that start METICU
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 12
Could you have found METICULOUS?
OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 12 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER