A word a day.

daunt \dawnt, dahnt\, verb:
1. to frighten; overcome with fear
2. to discourage; lesson the courage of

"The huge size of a vessel does not seem to daunt the pirates," he said. "It shows their high degree of audacity and resources."-- Xan Rice, The Guardian, 2008-11-18

It's a job that can daunt grieving relatives or anyone who hasn't had experience digging through federal files.-- Jack Forgy, Miami Herald, 2008-10-22

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fastidious \fa-STID-ee-uhs\, adjective:
hard to please; extremely refined or critical

For months, his tall, fastidious figure had prowled around the old city hall on Wall Street, examining its eighty-year-old brickwork, muttering to himself in French, or his syntactically challenged English, imagining-where others saw merely a tired old workhorse of a building-a blank canvas upon which to paint an architectural epic.-- Fergus M. Bordewich, The Making of the American Capital, 2008-05-16

Penske cannot say for sure that being fastidious off the racetrack results in being fast on it. What he can say, though, is that he has created a culture that has fostered loyalty.-- Dave Caldwell, New York Times, 2006-05-28

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hapless \HAP-lis\, adjective:
unlucky; unfortunate

It might explain how, on consecutive Sundays, quarterback Jay Cutler and Co. could be crushed by the hapless Oakland Raiders, only to pick up the pieces and dominate a New York Jets team that looked unbeatable.-- Mark Kiszla, Denver Post, 2008-12-07

Matthew Broderick has gone from playing a hapless Broadway producer in the hit musical "The Producers" to a hapless movie writer-director in the new comedy "The Last Shot," which opens Friday.-- Susan King, LA Times, 2004-09-20