>>giulio+(OP)
I had first noticed "meticulous" to be used a lot in translations from chinese. Is it sth about chinese itself (that they use sth a lot for which meticulous is the closest translation), or about some translation software that is possibly biased towards such buzzwords when translating to english?
>>freeho+d9
ESL here, not Chinese. I find meticulous to be a perfectly normal word, I think I don't really use it, but I think I read it from time to time, but maybe I just read some sort of publication by a fan of the word? :)
Same for surpass and boast, I think I use "surpass expectations" and I had to think for a moment, I would use 'brag' these days but pretty sure in school I learned boast, which sounds more formal BE to me, but of course I'm just guessing here.