exact [LME] Exact first came into the language as a term meaning ‘to demand goods or money as payment or tax’. It was borrowed from Latin exagere ‘to drive or lead out’. The adjective appears in the mid 16th century in the sense ‘precise, accurate, highly skilled’. Shakespeare in the early 17th century is the first recorded use of the sense ‘precise’ as opposed to ‘approximate’. Exacting, ‘making excessive demands’, is late 16th century.