Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Extreme meticulousness or overrefinement, as in language, taste, or style.
- n. An instance of extreme meticulousness or overrefinement.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Costliness; value; great worth; preciousness.
- n. Anything of great price or value.
- n. The quality of being overnice; fastidiousness; excessive refinement.
- n. The character of being precious in sense 6 or 7. See precious, 6.
Wiktionary
- n. A state or condition of overemphasizing detail, especially of pronunciation when speaking.
- n. obsolete Something precious.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete Preciousness; something precious.
- n. Fastidious refinement, esp. in language; specif., the affected purism and sententiousness characteristic of the French précieuses of the 17th century.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the quality of being fastidious or excessively refined
Etymologies
- Middle English preciousite, preciousness, from Old French preciosite, from Latin pretiōsitās, from pretiōsus, precious, from pretium, price; see precious. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“It is in the salon that the over-refinement called preciosity budded and bloomed.”
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 6: Fathers of the Church-Gregory XI
“Although he is increasingly reviled these days for his purported stylistic preciosity, John Updike remains a writer I am able to read with pleasure because he successfully avoids inflicting such damage.”
“Any poetry removed from popular diction will inevitably become as esoteric as 18th-century satire (perfected by Alexander Pope), whose dense allusiveness and preciosity drove the early Romantic poets into the countryside to find living speech again.”
“Paglia (correctly) emphasizes the way in which English is constantly changing -- which makes it an ever-renewable source of new kinds of writing -- but she ought to consider this when elevating the Romantic poets '"living speech" over "dense allusiveness and preciosity.”
“A tiny pale print of a horse and coach in the rain 1899-1900 epitomizes the preciosity of his photo-secession phase.”
“But any preciosity is overruled by the film's emotional intelligence, as when George inhales the smell of a stranger's Jack Russell that evokes the dogs he owned with his lover.”
“Huxley and Fisher were great naturalists and understandably allergic to preciosity.”
“We shouldn't be making up ways to accommodate their religious preciosity.”
On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with...
“For all the preciosity of its product, the perfume industry generates annual revenues of $31 billion; 170,000 bottles of perfume are sold every day in France -- and 170,000 Frenchmen can't be wrong.”
The Wall Street Journal: Sniffing Out the Next Big Fragrance
“It is hard to avoid preciosity in books about books, but here Funke pulls off the feat with vigor ....”
Inkheart: Summary and book reviews of Inkheart by Cornelia Funke.
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘preciosity’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Specifically
Being a list of words which have "specifically" in their definitions.
recompose, specifically, Dutch, abstinence, discipline, virtue, namely, opening, century, amalgamation, cup, second and 303 more...
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Good Words
fenestering, cetic, immanent, quickening, archetypal, shibboleth, soma, wetware, heritable, Apotheosis, halcyon, cellar door and 482 more...
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Vocab
Words that I come across, and go blank, or want to clarify.
nefarious, edifice, malevolent, ostensible, folderol, bauble, livid, amnesty, calculus, saddlery, maisonette, cuisse and 423 more...
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5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
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Words of the Dying Earth
Tales of the Dying Earth is a 2002 anthology volume featuring four novels by Jack Vance: The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga and Rhialto the Marvellous.
Throughou...deodar, deodand, pelgrane, leucomorph, blister-bush, russet, black burdock, gunmetal, spatterlight, carrack, concertina, terce and 280 more...
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simple & useful 14
fabrication, parapet, transverse, erecting, dimpled, blistering, epoxy, scrubbable, immersion, puttying, sandpapered, stippled and 65 more...
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Daily
thaumaturgy, lagniappe, gabble, Cytherean, samizdat, lixiviate, quintal, Rabelaisian, prescind, duende, deglutition, mancinism and 69 more...
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KatieClove's Words
aye, musing, drunkard, scribbling, heartful, tea, kerouac, preciosity, a priori, eldritch, shiola, dharma bum and 11 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for preciosity.
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