Alternative expression/term to trivial use of 'OCD'

After being reproved for doing so myself on SO yesterday. I realized that over the last couple of years the meaning of the expression OCD, seems to have deflated. Up to the point where people(read I) mostly associate it with pet peeves like the price of a fill up at a petrol station and the amount of litres, not both being round or misaligned street tiles.

It is obviously very useful since most of us can relate to this feeling to some degree. However, in a slightly more formal context like SE, this obviously is not an appropriate word to use since its trivialises a very serious affliction and therefore might be hurtful to people suffering from real OCD.

What would be a viable alternative in a context like this?

Solution 1:

The cheapening of psychiatric terms is not restricted to OCD, look at what has happened to "psychopath". (Where I used to live, it has come to be identical with "ex-husband".)

As HotLicks says, we can go to its root with "obsessive", or if exercised on language (if the cap fits, wear it) we have "pedantic". In general, "niggly" and "picky". Area51's "fussy" can also be a noun, namely "fusspot", which I think our grandparents would have used for the people you have in mind.

You might like to speed-read Jane Austen for what she called ladies who absolutely had to have their toast just so, or early Hollywood biographies for stars who went postal if towels were wrongly laid out.

Solution 2:

Fussy could serve the purpose.

too concerned or worried about details or standards, especially unimportant ones

[Oxford]

Solution 3:

I suppose you could use anal, for someone who has an obsessive attention to detail but I'd say that's stronger than just being fussy.

Source: The Free Dictionary

Solution 4:

I love the word "pernickety" (which is an alternative form of "persnickety"):

per(s)nickety

overparticular; fussy

Source: Dictionary.com

Mr. Pernickety from the Mr. Men series

Solution 5:

The symptoms associated with the trivial use of "OCD" tend to match the definition of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). Rephrasing the DSM-5 definition of OCPD gives several words for describing aspects of OCPD.

1. Legalistic; preoccupied with rules so as to lose the point of an activity.
2. Perfectionist; letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
3. Workaholic; devotes self to work to the exclusion of leisure.
4. Purist, scrupulous, or inflexible about ethics, beyond what's expected from culture or religion.
5. Hoarder of goods; will not discard what fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien called mathoms, things one keeps but does not use.
6. Micromanager; delegates tasks only when the patient can be certain that they will be completed to the slightest detail.
7. Miserly, stingy, or niggardly; hoarding money "for a rainy day".
8. Rigid or stubborn.

Also consider the word fastidious, which Wiktionary defines as "Excessively particular, demanding, or fussy about details, especially about tidiness and cleanliness."