exact vs correct

Question

Hi,How to distinguish clearly the difference in meaning btw exact, correct and accurate?ex: the exact time = the correct time = the accurate time?Q

Milky · Accepted Answer

correct/accurate = are the same in this context, but I wouldn't hear "accurate" often in such contexts. If a person has his/her watch set incorrectly, another person may say "the correct time is...".

exact = can have the meaning of the above, but normally means "precise". Ia a person is ten minutes late for an appointment, for example, he/she may claim that it he/she is only two minutes late. The other person may correct the speaker by stating the precise time. Or, if one has to catch a train, one might need the precise/exact time.

Tung Quoc · Answer

You wrote:

correct/accurate = are the same in this context, but I wouldn't hear "accurate" often in such contexts. If a person has his/her watch set incorrectly, another person may say "the correct time is...".

Correct here means..........

Q

MrPedantic · Answer

You might distinguish those three terms by the contexts in which they're often found. Thus:

1. "Correct" time, e.g. "Do you have the correct time?" The focus is on time which is sufficiently exact for everyday purposes. There is no need to give the seconds, when answering this question.

2. "Accurate" time, e.g. "This watch is very accurate", "This clock keeps accurate time". The focus is on the method or apparatus of measurement.

3. "Exact" time, e.g. the time as given by the Greenwich Observatory website. The focus is on the standard.

But no doubt speakers use the three terms as rough synonyms, much of the time.

MrP

Marius Hancu · Answer

--------
correct

synonyms ACCURATE, EXACT, PRECISE, NICE, RIGHT:

correct means hardly more than freedom from fault or error, often as judged by some conventional or acknowledged standard<it is our custom at Shangri-La to be moderately truthful, and I can assure you that my statements about the porters were almost correct -- James Hilton> <the more correct social circles of Boston and Cambridge -- Florence H. Bullock>

ACCURATE implies positive and careful fidelity to fact or truth<the phrases are good enough for statesmen, who identify order with orders and creation with regulations, but the poet-writer must be more accurate than that -- E.M.Forster> <a solecism of this kind ... would have seemed a shocking thing to ... so accurate a scholar -- L.P.Smith>

EXACT, sometimes interchangeable with PRECISE, generally emphasizes the strictness of the agreement or conformity with fact, standard, or truth<not less than a hundred and thirty feet surely ... a hundred and twenty-eight, to be exact -- Dorothy Sayers> <sciences are not vague. On the contrary they are exact. They are based on fact, proven fact -- T.B.Costain>

PRECISE carries the idea of sharpness of definition or delimitation or scrupulous exactness<I saw the outside of the note, addressed in straggling, irregular characters, very unlike Holmes' usual precise hand -- A.C.Doyle> <only an endlessly patient, careful, laborious, precise investigator could set up the new revolutionary conceptions needed to replace these traditions and preconceptions -- Havelock Ellis>

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exact vs correct

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