Preciosity

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Preciosity \Pre`ci*os"i*ty\, n.
     Preciousness; something precious. [Obs.] --Sir T. Browne.
     [1913 Webster]

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:



  Preciosity \Pre`ci*os"i*ty\, n.; pl. {-ties}. [F.
     pr['e]ciosit['e], OF. also precieuset['e].]
     Fastidious refinement, esp. in language; specif., the
     affected purism and sententiousness characteristic of the
     French pr['e]cieuses of the 17th century.
  
           He had the fastidiousness, the preciosity, the love of
           archaisms, of your true decadent.        --L. Douglas.
     [Webster 1913 Suppl.]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  preciosity
       n : the quality of being fastidious or excessively refined

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  36 Moby Thesaurus words for "preciosity":
     Gongorism, affectation, affectedness, artfulness, artifice,
     artificiality, ceremonialism, elegance, euphemism, euphuism,
     exquisiteness, formalism, formality, goody-goodness,
     goody-goodyism, hyperelegance, legalism, manneredness, mannerism,
     overelaboration, overelegance, overniceness, overpreciseness,
     overrefinement, pedantism, pedantry, preciousness, preciseness,
     precisianism, pretentiousness, punctilio, punctiliousness, purism,
     ritualism, scrupulousness, unnaturalness