Pinpointed

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Located or identified with great accuracy or exactness ; extremely precise or detailed in nature
2. Recognized or found with pinpoint accuracy ; characterized by exact and meticulous specificity
3. Determined or distinguished very clearly and accurately ; marked by a high degree of exactness and clarity

Etymology: "Pinpointed" is the past tense and past participle of "pinpoint," so its history is that of the verb it comes from. "Pinpoint" is a compound of "pin" and "point," and the two parts are both very old English words. A pin was a slender piece of metal with a sharp tip, and a point was the sharp end of something. Put together, the image is literal: a point as fine as the tip of a pin. Over time that picture moved from the physical to the abstract. To pinpoint something came to mean locating it with the precision of a needle's tip, and from there it took on the sense of identifying or specifying something exactly. The past forms carry that meaning into describing a fault, a location, or a problem that someone has identified with precision.

Synonyms: identified, located, determined, specified, isolated