[MD] Precious ?

[david buchanan]

dmb said to Ian:
What you've probably encountered is a sarcastic kind of slang. It means the person is being too picky, too fussy or taking themselves too seriously. I once heard someone insult Boulder, Colorado by saying, "it's a little too precious." It can also be used in a condescending way, wherein you say "isn't that precious?" in the same way you'd say it to a three year-old child. It's a sarcastic way of mocking self-importance or some other misplacement of values.


Ian replied:
DMB, no, not sarcastic nor mocking, nor even about self-importance either, about attaching importance to a particular aspect of a particular thing, [in English that is not Coloradoese, anyway in the "being precious about .." sense. Even as a generalized trait of an individual, I wouldn't see it as needing to be sarcastic or mocking. Ho hum.]


dmb says:
Sigh.
If you look at the definition that Horse supplied, you can plainly see that it is sarcastic, that's why they call it "the negative adjective". And it is mocking or, as the definition puts it, "usually depreciative". It can be found in dictionaries on both sides of the Atlantic. 

PRECIOUS adjective: Affectedly refined in conduct, manners, language, taste, etc. Now usually depreciative: overparticular, overdelicate, overfastidious, overdainty, overrefined, or overnice; pretentious, affected, posing, hypocritical (Oxford English Dictionary, Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, American Heritage Dictionary, Pocket American Thesaurus)


This definition says "pretentious" and "posing" where I said "self-importance" and it says "overparticular" and "overdelicate" where I said "picky" and "fussy". They say it's negative and deprecating where I said it was sarcastic and mocking. C'mon, Ian. I nailed it.