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

As the précieuse did nothing according to common usage, she could not dine p. 50like another. 

From The Essays of "George Eliot" Complete by Nathan Sheppard

It was "searched," a little précieuse, and the tales themselves were diaphanous enough, polished little contes, the points subtle, the action turning upon minute psychological distinctions.

From The Spinner's Book of Fiction by Various

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

These ladies called each other, with demonstrative fondness, "Ma précieuse."

From Classic French Course in English by William Cleaver Wilkinson

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

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

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

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

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

From Gossip in a Library by Edmund Gosse

We are vexed by pedantries that recall the précieuses of the Hôtel Rambouillet, but we know that she had the soul of the most heroic women in history.

From Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) The Life of George Eliot by John Morley