Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Overrefinement, as in language, taste, or style.
- noun An instance of overrefinement.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The character of being precious in sense 6 or 7. See
precious , 6. - noun Costliness; value; great worth; preciousness.
- noun Anything of great price or value.
- noun The quality of being overnice; fastidiousness; excessive refinement.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun obsolete Preciousness; something precious.
- noun Fastidious refinement, esp. in language; specif., the affected purism and sententiousness characteristic of the French précieuses of the 17th century.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A state or condition of
overemphasizing detail , especially ofpronunciation when speaking. - noun obsolete Something
precious .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the quality of being fastidious or excessively refined
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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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 1840-1916 1913
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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.
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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."
Poetry 2010
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A tiny pale print of a horse and coach in the rain 1899-1900 epitomizes the preciosity of his photo-secession phase.
From the Shadows of Giants Richard B. Woodward 2011
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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.
Poetry 2010
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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.
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Huxley and Fisher were great naturalists and understandably allergic to preciosity.
A Year on the Wing TIM DEE 2009
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We shouldn't be making up ways to accommodate their religious preciosity.
On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with... 2008
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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.
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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. 2003
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