preciosity
Americannoun
noun
Other Word 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.
She flirts with preciosity, particularly in her overbearing use of Keaton.
From Washington Post • Jan. 25, 2022
“Darkness Odyssey” doesn’t become boring, but it does become a willful exercise in preciosity, in artful effects.
From New York Times • Dec. 15, 2017
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
A comic, convivial, burlesque or picaresque literature became, as it were, a parody of the literature of preciosity.
From A History of French Literature Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. by Gosse, Edmund
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
