Definition, Meaning & Synonyms | English word PRECIOSITY

Definitions of PRECIOSITY

1. (usually, pejorative, uncountable) The quality of being overly refined in an affected way (often used to describe speech or writing, but also visual art and dress).
2. (usually, pejorative, countable) An instance of preciosity; something that is overly refined in an affected way.
3. (obsolete, uncountable) The quality of being precious (of high value or worth).
4. (obsolete, countable) Something of high value or worth.

Examples of Using PRECIOSITY in a Sentence

• Sometimes her quest of an austere beaty is carried too far toward preciosity, but often she attains without effort a severe clarity and precision which the rising generation will do well to study.
• His emphatic preciosity and sophistical insistence on the point of honor are tedious and unconvincing; in La venganza en el despeño, in Á lo que obliga un agravio, and in other plays, he merely recasts, albeit very adroitly, works by Lope de Vega.
• Mary McCarthy's 1955 novel A Charmed Life depicts Meigs as "Dolly Lamb", a tiresome artist whose paintings were "cramped with preciosity and mannerism".
• Bernardi stated that Conterno affirmed subtlety, the aristocracy of touch, the serene poetry that diffuses from his placid and accurate painterliness Schialvino describes it him as a painter able to depict small things made large by the insufflation of a poetic spirit, depictions, despite the vagary of the subject, full of intimacy, exquisiteness, preciosity, meditation, solemnity, and religion.

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