précieuse

American  

[prey-see-ooz, prey-syœz] / ˌpreɪ siˈʊz, preɪˈsjœz /

noun

• précieuses
  plural

1. one of the 17th-century literary women of France who affected an extreme care in the use of language.

2. an affected or pretentious woman, especially one marked by preciosity in manner or speech.

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adjective

1. (of a woman) marked by affectation or preciosity.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• précieuses
  plural

Etymology

Origin of précieuse

1720–30; < French; feminine of précieux ( def. ); see -euse

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

précieuse précieuses

There is an advance in character, an advance in "interior" description—the Vollichon family circle, the banter and the gambling at Lucrèce's home, the humour of a précieuse meeting, etc.

From A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 From the Beginning to 1800 by George Saintsbury

Here in America their only suitable place would be a museum, or to frame the tiny "devotional" of some précieuse Flower of Modernity.

From The Art of Interior Decoration by Grace Wood

She gave him a full history of her brother's honourable and brilliant career; and here let it be said that the précieuse in her gave way to the sister, and that she talked with feeling.

From Marriage à la mode by Mrs. Humphry Ward

We hope we have not been understood as meaning to insinuate, that because her Ladyship is the mother of a couple of dozen of volumes, she is on that account a précieuse ridicule.

From The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 by Robert Walsh

Miss Seward, a typical specimen of the provincial précieuse, attempted to trace them in an epitaph which he was said to have written at the age of three.

From Samuel Johnson by Sir Leslie Stephen

When in 1659 his comedy Les précieuses Ridicules took Paris by storm, it did more than make a reformation of the manners of its own.

From The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 by Rossiter Johnson

But among the précieuses of the seventeenth century there was much more appreciation.

From Gossip in a Library by Edmund Gosse

Madame de Longueville reigned there as well as in all the best circles of Paris; and it must be confessed, with her good qualities she had also some of the defects of the best précieuses.

From Political Women, Vol. 1 by Sutherland Menzies

That which vauntingly styles itself the écriture artiste must reap its reward promptly in praise from the précieuses ridicules of the hour.

From Inquiries and Opinions by Brander Matthews

Some of the refined ladies at Mrs. Gilder's objected to his "crude speech," for even in the eighties there were still précieuses.

From Confessions of a Book-Lover by Maurice Francis Egan