Definition of "preciosity" [pre•ci•os•i•ty]

• Extreme meticulousness or overrefinement, as in language, taste, or style. (noun)
• An instance of extreme meticulousness or overrefinement. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "It is in the salon that the over-refinement called preciosity budded and bloomed."
• "Although he is increasingly reviled these days for his purported stylistic preciosity, John Updike remains a writer I am able to read with pleasure because he successfully avoids inflicting such damage."
• "Any poetry removed from popular diction will inevitably become as esoteric as 18th-century satire (perfected by Alexander Pope), whose dense allusiveness and preciosity drove the early Romantic poets into the countryside to find living speech again."