rigorous

• rigourous (misspelling, or rare, archaic)

From Old French, from Late Latin rigorosus.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹɪɡəɹəs/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -ɪɡəɹəs

rigorous (comparative more rigorous, superlative most rigorous)

1. Showing, causing, or favoring rigour/rigor; scrupulously accurate or strict; thorough.

   a rigorous officer of justice

   a rigorous execution of law

   a rigorous inspection

   • 2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

     Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.

2. Severe; intense.

   a rigorous winter.

Although British English has rigour vs. American English rigor, rigorous is spelled thus in all varieties of English.

• (showing, causing or favoring rigor): painstaking, scrupulous; see also Thesaurus:meticulous
• (severe; intense): harsh, strict; see also Thesaurus:stern

• (severe; intense): arbitrary, capricious, whimsical

• nonrigorous
• overrigorous
• rigorously
• rigorousness
• unrigorous

• rigorous at OneLook Dictionary Search
• rigorous in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911