See overprecision on Wiktionary
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"ref": "1909, Tadasu Misawa, Modern Educators and Their Ideals, D. Appleton and Company, pages 280-281:",
"text": "The motor coordinations are lost for a moment, all the ways of awkwardness, mannerisms, and semi-imperative acts manifest themselves as a result. This is again the age of the basal — e. g., hill-climbing muscles of leg and back and shoulder work, and of the yet more fundamental heart, lung, and chest muscles \" (1: vol. i, p. 165). As during early childhood, now the danger is overemphasis upon the activities of accessory muscles and overprecision.",
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"ref": "1917, University of the State of New York, New York State Library, Bibliography Bulletin, Volume 6, Issues 61-70, University of the State of New York, page 17:",
"text": "A-B-C of correct speech and the art of conversation (Harper's A-B-C ser. Harper 50c) by Mrs F. M. (Howe) Hall is a brief but suggestive discussion of the best usage in English, everyday mistakes in speaking, the use of slang, the voice, and overprecision in speech, with a few chapters on acquiring the art of conversation.",
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"ref": "1922, Mechanical Engineering 1922-07: Volume 44, Issue 7, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, page 430:",
"text": "There is nothing whatever to be gained by reporting efficiency more closely than the nearest tenth of one per cent, or even the nearest half. Not only is such apparent precision as 1 in 1000 unwarranted by the exigencies of boiler testing; but engineering judgment is quite unable to make use of it. It is mentally impossible to differentiate between the relative values of 79.9 and 80.1 per cent efficiency and it seems only sensible to call it 80 per cent. Especially is such overprecision absurd, inasmuch as it is not certain that it was not really 79 or 81 per cent, or even a little further away.",
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"ref": "1935, Ann Bridge, Illyrian Spring, Little, Brown, and Company, page 242:",
"text": "At the end he asked her if she liked it? Grace studied the picture carefully. It was unexpectedly good. That idea of concentrating most of the light in the background in those blazing flowers, leaving the figure in shadow, was unusual and curious, but he had brought it off; in that dim filtered light the relaxation of the pose, the tones of dress and skin, took on a remarkable quality.There was no overprecision this time, either; though the painting was forcible and direct, there was an ease, an expansion about it—the warmth and light were there all right, but used with a stroke of ingenuity that was almost genius to emphasize the quiet meditative aspect of the portrait itself.",
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"ref": "1949-1967, Bette La Verne Fauth, Warren Wesley Fauth, A Study of the Proceedings of the Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf: 1850-1949^([archive.org/details/bwb_C0-BGO-163?q=overprecision]), pages 202-203:",
"text": "Dr. Elizabeth McDowell, from Columbia University, emphasized ease and precision as the prime objectives of speech. She warned against aiming at overprecision in teaching articulation since it spoils the quality of tone. Dr. McDowell believed that the practice of feeling throat vibrations, to gain more accurate consonants was responsible for developing hoarse voices. Melody, phrasing, and rhythm in speech patterns are too often sacrificed in order to get clear cut sounds which are less likely to give the speaker intelligibility. The serial order of emphasis in the phonetic processes of speech should be phrasing, timing, stress, melody, timbre, and accuracy, not the reverse (45).",
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"text": "There is nothing whatever to be gained by reporting efficiency more closely than the nearest tenth of one per cent, or even the nearest half. Not only is such apparent precision as 1 in 1000 unwarranted by the exigencies of boiler testing; but engineering judgment is quite unable to make use of it. It is mentally impossible to differentiate between the relative values of 79.9 and 80.1 per cent efficiency and it seems only sensible to call it 80 per cent. Especially is such overprecision absurd, inasmuch as it is not certain that it was not really 79 or 81 per cent, or even a little further away.",
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"text": "Dr. Elizabeth McDowell, from Columbia University, emphasized ease and precision as the prime objectives of speech. She warned against aiming at overprecision in teaching articulation since it spoils the quality of tone. Dr. McDowell believed that the practice of feeling throat vibrations, to gain more accurate consonants was responsible for developing hoarse voices. Melody, phrasing, and rhythm in speech patterns are too often sacrificed in order to get clear cut sounds which are less likely to give the speaker intelligibility. The serial order of emphasis in the phonetic processes of speech should be phrasing, timing, stress, melody, timbre, and accuracy, not the reverse (45).",
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Download raw JSONL data for overprecision meaning in All languages combined (4.5kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-02-11 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-02-01 using wiktextract (f492ef9 and 59dc20b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
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