thoroughgoing.
“Thoroughgoing” (a solid word) means “thorough,” but it connotes zeal or ardor. It is not, therefore, merely a needless variant of “thorough” — e.g.:
o “There is no question the charter needs a thoroughgoing review and rewrite.” “L.A. City Elections,” L.A. Times, 16 Mar. 1997, at M4.
o “[The governor] hasn’t risked one iota of political capital to put such thoroughgoing reform on the state’s agenda.” “Give Back the Money,” Sacramento Bee, 12 May 1997, at B6.
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Quotation of the Day: “The number of words in a man’s vocabulary is as definite as the number of dollars he has in the bank; equally definite is the number of senses in which a man is able to use any given word. But there is a difference: a man cannot draw upon the public treasury when his bank balance is overdrawn, but we can all draw upon the dictionary to get the coin we need to carry on the transaction of reading anything we want.” Mortimer Adler, “How to Read a Dictionary” (1941), in Words, Words, Words About Dictionaries 53, 58-59 (Jack C. Gray ed., 1963).