preciosity
Americannoun
-
preciosities
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of preciosity
1350–1400; Middle English preciousite < Middle French preciosite < Latin pretiōsitās. See precious, -ity
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Since 2016, after a brief retirement from moviemaking, he has found a new auteurist groove with modest resources, fast shoots, boundless energy and a striking lack of preciosity about the medium.
From New York Times ● Feb. 9, 2022
She flirts with preciosity, particularly in her overbearing use of Keaton.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 25, 2022
Despite the formidable artistry exerted by its actors on its realization, “Brooklyn” isn’t so much a bad movie as it is a virtual self-parody of a genre—that of the minor, dignified, clean-hands art-house preciosity.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 6, 2015
Author Lee, 34, an Alabaman, has written her first novel with all of the tactile brilliance and none of the preciosity generally supposed to be standard swamp-warfare issue for Southern writers.
From Time ● Feb. 3, 2015
The poet also learned to avoid the danger of stressing trivial and impertinent pathos, and he rejected the elegancies of style that threatened to lead to preciosity.
From Vergil A Biography by Tenney Frank
From England came the apocalyptic chants of Edith Sitwell, who had journeyed a long way from her early preciosities.
From Time Magazine Archive
Rare privilege, truly, when its preciosities are oiled with mellifluous King's English, even though by spurious engineers.
From Time Magazine Archive
On other days, he was lifted to the seventh heaven by an enthusiastic genteel mob, who followed every deft turn of expression with shouts and gestures of delight, and far-fetched preciosities of approbation.
From Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius by Samuel Dill
She also published Lycidus, a Voyage from the Island of Love, returning to the Abbé Tallemant’s dainty preciosities.
From The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume I by Montague Summers
Art is not a "hole and corner" thing, an affair of professional preciosities and discriminations, a set of tiresome rules to be learned by rote.
From Suspended Judgments Essays on Books and Sensations by John Cowper Powys
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