Home / Words / precisionNo. 0243

precision

/prɪˈsɪʒn//prɪˈsɪʒn/·noun
exactness and consistency — results or workmanship tightly repeatable
Fig. 1 — The tweezers lower the first gear toward its post, pause a hair's breadth above, correct sideways by less than a visible amount, and seat it; the gauge reads a hundredth of a millimetre.
01Definition

Precision is exactness you can repeat: the fineness of a measurement, the tightness of a grouping, the meticulous control of a movement. Where its sibling accuracy asks 'how close to the truth?', precision asks 'how close to each other — and to how many decimal places?'. From Latin praecidere, 'to cut short, cut off', it keeps the sense of clean edges: a precise figure is cut to exactly the right size. The word also works as a quiet adjective — precision engineering, a precision instrument — for machinery built to tolerances most tools cannot hold.

02In use
  • iThe watchmaker fitted the gears with a precision that no factory line could match.
  • iiState the margin of error; a figure's precision should not outrun its evidence.
  • iiiThe routine was rehearsed until the whole troupe moved with military precision.
03Collocations
  • with military precision
  • with surgical precision
  • precision engineering
  • a precision instrument
  • the precision of the measurement

Family precise (adjective) · precisely (adverb) · imprecision (noun)

04Relations

=exactness, accuracy, rigor, fineness, consistency

≠imprecision, vagueness

06TOEFL & IELTS

Examiners use this word about your vocabulary: lexical precision — choosing the exact word rather than a near neighbour — is what separates band 7 word choice from band 9. In science passages, precision is the repeatability of measurements (decimal places, tight spreads), deliberately contrasted with accuracy; in general prose it is fine exactness, with the idioms 'with military precision' and 'with surgical precision' for flawless execution. Stress the middle: pri-SIZH-un.

07Asked
What is the difference between precision and accuracy?
Precision is agreement among results — the same reading, the same seat, time after time; accuracy is agreement with the truth. A watch assembled with perfect precision can still run fast if its regulator is set wrong: consistent, and consistently off. Instruments are graded on both, and science writing keeps the two words strictly apart.
Precision, preciseness, or précis — which is which?
Precision is the standard noun of precise; preciseness exists but reads as a stumble, and the pair completes with precisely (adverb) and imprecision (the failure). The genuine trap is the third form: a précis, pronounced PRAY-see, is a different word altogether — a concise summary of a text, from the same French family but naming a document, not a quality. 'The precis of the instrument' is a real learner slip worth guarding against.
What does precision mean in measurement?
Repeatability and fineness: how tightly repeated measurements agree with each other, and how finely the instrument resolves — 3.14159 is a more precise statement of pi than 3.14, whether or not your ruler deserves the extra digits. In the scene above, the gauge returns the same one-hundredth-of-a-millimetre reading for both gears: that repeatability is the precision — and it says nothing, by itself, about whether the finished watch will tell the right time.
What does 'with military precision' mean?
Executed with perfectly drilled timing and order — every step where it should be, when it should be, like a parade-ground manoeuvre: 'the wedding ran with military precision'. Its operating-theatre sibling, 'with surgical precision', emphasizes controlled exactness in a delicate task. Both idioms are compliments to planning and control, and both survive comfortably in formal writing.
What is a 'precision instrument'?
One built to work at very fine tolerances — laboratory balances, chronometers, machine tools — where precision acts as a noun-modifier, doing an adjective's job: precision engineering, precision optics, precision agriculture. English lets nouns modify nouns this way, and this word does it constantly. The phrase certifies the standard of manufacture, not any single measurement the device has made.
What does 'precisely' mean when used alone as a reply?
Emphatic agreement: 'So the delay was avoidable?' — 'Precisely.' It endorses not just the speaker's drift but their exact formulation — stronger and more formal than 'exactly right'. In its ordinary adverb life, precisely pins numbers and statements down ('at precisely 9:04') with the same cut-to-size exactness the noun carries.