précieuse

American  

[pray-see-ooz, pray-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

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Etymology

Origin of précieuse

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

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

précieuse précieuses

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

Miss Neville should have reigned at the Hotel de Rambouillet when précieuse was more honoured than now.

From Infelice by Augusta J. (Augusta Jane) Evans

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

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

In a sort of loud cackling—a voice she sometimes surprisingly adopted—she replied, "Oh, give me a blow-out of tripe and onions!" to the confusion of the précieuses.

From Some Diversions of a Man of Letters by Edmund Gosse

About our author, however, we know that his experience has been long, and of the best, that he does not speak from a hasty acquaintance with a few contemporary précieux and précieuses.

From On the Sublime by H. L. (Herbert Lord) Havell

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

She was carefully brought up under Ménage and Rapin, among others, and was one of the most brilliant of the précieuses of the Hôtel Rambouillet.

From A Short History of French Literature by George Saintsbury

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

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