Preciosity

1902, R. Langton Douglas, A History of Siena, New York: E.P. Dutton, Chapter 18, p. 385, [Italian renaissance painter Neroccio] had the fastidiousness, the preciosity, the love of archaisms, of your true decadent.

It is […] a section of society where everybody talks and poses, where pedantry masquerades as knowledge, sentimentality as sentiment, and preciosity as delicacy and refinement;

1916, John Cowper Powys, “Oscar Wilde” in Suspended Judgments, New York: G. Arnold Shaw, p. 416, The style of Wilde is one of the simplest in existence, but its simplicity is the very apex and consummation of the artificial. He uses Biblical language with that self-conscious preciosity—like the movements of a person walking on tiptoe in the presence of the dead—which is so different from the sturdy directness of Bunyan or the restrained rhetoric of the Church of England prayers.

He was dressed very well and carefully, she thought, and wondered whether Arthur’s preciosity in the matter of clothing influenced his staff.

“O Father Master, is it possible! (exclaimed the Beneficiary ready to roll about the floor with laughing) is it possible that such preciosities are printed! […]”

1913, John Hay Beith (as Ian Hay), Happy-Go-Lucky, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Book 3, Chapter 12, p. 151, “Yes, mother mine,” she replied. (Sylvia was rather addicted to little preciosities of this kind.)

A book like Tropic of Cancer, published at such a time, must be either a tedious preciosity or something unusual, and I think a majority of the people who have read it would agree that it is not the first.

I must be forc’d to say somewhat of Margarites [i.e. pearls] themselves, and I am affraid I shall rather be struck with the deepest amazement and confusion, than be able to expresse their unspeakable worth and preciosity.

[The figurehead] was covered up with tow and sacking and so hidden under pretence of safety that none might discover the secret of its intrinsic preciosity.

He did not love the vulger herd, but he knew that his own vulgarity would be greater if he forbade it ingress, and that it was not by preciosity that he would attain to the intimate spirit of the dell.