Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

[ . . . ]

[about "precious" in a pejorative sense]

_Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary_ (aka _W3NID_ on
CD) has

  3 a : PARTICULAR, FASTIDIOUS  
    b : OVERNICE, OVERREFINED *divorced from the social
        instinct, thought ... tends to become finicky
        and precious Bertrand Russell*  
    c : AFFECTED, POSING, HYPOCRITICAL *have made
        culture appear to be a power in whose service
        people could grow dry, intolerant, and precious
        Katharine F. Gerould*

I too think M-W has missed the mark.  The sense we are discussing,
it seems to me, includes that which is too cute, too clever,
highly mannered, excessively elevated for the situation, highly
ornamented, and in the case of prose, largely overlapping with the
sort we call "purple."  I can think of a few expressions:  toilet
tissue (for toilet paper), dish cloth and dust cloth (for dish rag
and dust rag) and the Victorian piano which had limbs rather than
legs.  These are excessively refined in the sense of being just a
tad too delicate.  My grandmother would have called some of these
"nasty nice."

The best example of preciousness of this kind that I can think of
occurs in Spanish.  "Huevos" (literally, eggs) in vulgar speech may
mean testicles (compare "nuts" in English).  So in the diner for
breakfast, the excessively refined person orders "blanquitas"
(literally "little white ones") which is understood to mean eggs. But
the effect is often not quite so refined as the customer might hope.
After all, no sane person would suppose that in the context that
"huevos" meant testicles (any more than a reasonable person would
associate a piano leg with a human leg) -- but using the euphemism
immediately reminds everyone of the double meaning and, moreover,
indicates that the speaker knows it too.

Surely you get "Keeping Up Appearances."  Mrs. Buckét is precious.
But the show isn't.  Or so it seems to me.  While it takes a
conscious and considerable effort to be precious, but you cannot
achieve it deliberately.  That is a little like hypercorrection.
Except for a satiric effect or to create a character, no one aims to
be hypercorrect, but only gets there by overshooting correctness.

That being said, the sense seems to be rare.  "Precious prose" seems
almost always to mean either very valuable writing or, ironically,
writing not so valuable as the author might like to think.

Do you ever lay your hands on 'Private Eye'? They have a regular feature -
'Pseuds Corner' - which often has examples of precious writing alongside
downright pretentiousness, snobbery posing.
From http://www.private-eye.co.uk/pseuds.htm I would pick for preciousness :

<< CHAPMAN – On Christmas Day 2003, to Janette (nee Cousins) and Richard, a
daughter, Mistletoe Betty Berengaria, a darling sister for Thomas, Felicity
and Araminta.
Daily Telegraph birth announcements >>

And from the current dead-tree issue:

<< Fairy cakes. The fons et origo of my cupcake passion.  Nigella Lawson -
Sainsbury's magazine >>
--
John Dean
Oxford

How about the passage that made Tonstant Weader fwow up?

    "The more it snows, tiddely pom----"
       "Tiddely what?" said Piglet.
       "Pom," said Pooh. "I put that in to make it more hummy."

    http://winnie-the-pooh.ru/stories/english/house/

I also forgot to mention that Moliere wrote 'Les Precieuses Ridicules' as a
satire on the trend for using a roundabout form of language instead of
speaking plainly.
--
John Dean
Oxford