careful

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English careful, from Old English carful; equivalent to care +‎ -ful.

Pronunciation

  • (General American) IPA(key): /ˈkɛɹfəl/, [ˈkɛɹfəɫ], [ˈkɛɹfɫ̩]
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈkɛːfl̩/, [ˈkɛːfɫ̩]
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɛːfəl, -ɛəɹfəl

Adjective

careful (comparative more careful, superlative most careful)

  1. Taking care; attentive to potential danger, error or harm; cautious.
    He was a slow and careful driver.
    Be very careful while trekking through the jungle.
    • 2025 February 3, Anemona Hartocollis, “The University of California Increased Diversity. Now It’s Being Sued.”, in The New York Times‎[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 4 February 2025:
      John Aubrey Douglass, a senior research fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at Berkeley, said that while he was not an insider on admissions practices, “my sense is that admissions is highly regulated and careful to stay clear of Prop 209 restrictions, and the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action.”
  2. Conscientious and painstaking; meticulous.
    They made a careful search of the crime scene.
    • 2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 7:
      At the same time, we were cognisant that careful scholars should never solely rely on their own impressionistic observations, and, that our own impressions were inexact and not capable of being quantified.
  3. (obsolete) Full of care or grief; sorrowful, sad.
  4. (obsolete) Full of cares or anxiety; worried, troubled.

Synonyms

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