# precious

Pronunciation: US say "PRESH-uhs" /ˈpɹɛʃ.əs/; UK

## Adjective

1. Of great value, whether in money or because it cannot easily be replaced.
   - Simple: Worth a lot of money, or hard to replace.
   - _The museum's most precious artifact is a thousand-year-old manuscript._
   - _Fresh drinking water becomes precious during a long drought._
2. Held dear; regarded with love or tenderness.
   - Simple: Loved very much and treated with great care.
   - _Every moment with her grandparents felt precious._
   - _The soldier carried a precious letter from home all through the war._
4. Self-consciously contrived to seem cute or charming.
   - Simple: Trying too hard to seem cute or charming.
   - _The café's menu was too precious, with whimsical names for every plain dish._
   - _Critics found the novel's style precious and overworked._
5. Regarded with excessive reverence, as if too sacred to question or alter.
   - Simple: Treated with more respect than it really deserves.
   - _Over the decades the founder's words became precious, quoted as if beyond criticism._
   - _The gallery treats the sketch as precious, displaying it but never lending it out._
6. Extremely protective of something or insistent on strict standards concerning it. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: Very protective or strict about something.
   - _He's precious about his garden and won't let anyone else prune the roses._
   - _The chef is precious about her knives and never lets staff borrow them._
8. Thorough; utter; used to emphasize how complete something is, especially a mess. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: Complete and total, often used to make a mess sound worse.
   - _He made a precious mess of the accounts before anyone noticed._
   - _The whole event turned into a precious disaster._
9. Excessively elaborate or overrefined in style, to the point of being hard to follow.
   - Simple: Too fancy and complicated in the way it is written.
   - _Editors flagged the essay's precious phrasing and asked for plainer language._
   - _His column grew more precious each year, layered with needless allusions._
10. Used before a noun to express irritation or contempt; blasted; confounded. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: Used before a noun to show that you are annoyed about something.
   - _Where is that precious cat hiding now?_
   - _I've had quite enough of your precious excuses._

## Noun

3. A loved one; a darling.
   - Simple: A person or thing that is loved very much.
   - _She called the baby her precious and rocked him to sleep._
   - _Grandpa greeted each grandchild as his precious._

## Adverb

7. Very; used as an intensifier, chiefly before 'little' or 'few.'
   - Simple: Very, used mostly to make 'little' or 'few' stronger.
   - _They had precious little time before the deadline._
   - _Precious few people remember the old town as it once was._

## Origin

From Middle English precious, borrowed from Old French precios ("valuable, costly, beloved"), from Latin pretiōsus ("of great value, costly, dear"), from pretium ("value, price").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/precious (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).