precious

Etymology

From Middle English precious, borrowed from Old French precios (“valuable, costly, precious, beloved, also affected, finical”), from Latin pretiōsus (“of great value, costly, dear, precious”), from pretium (“value, price”); see price.

adj

1. Of high value or worth.
   People are a good thing, the most precious resource in a rich economy, so the progressive-minded feel. Only misanthropists disagree or the dottier Malthusians who send green-ink tweets deploring any state assistance for child-rearing. 2013-08-16, Polly Toynbee, “Britain's booming birthrate”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 10, page 21
   The crown had many precious gemstones. This building work needs site access, and tell the city council that I don't care about a few lorry tyre ruts across their precious grass verge.
2. Regarded with love or tenderness.
   My precious daughter is to marry.
3. (derogatory) Treated with too much reverence.
   He spent hours painting the eyes of the portrait, which his fellow artists regarded as a bit precious.
4. (informal, derogatory) Blasted; damned.
   It’s all owing to your precious caution that they got hold of it. If you had let me burn it, and taken my word that it was gone, it would have been a heap of ashes behind the fire, instead of being whole and sound, inside of my great-coat. 1839, Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
5. (derogatory) Contrived to be cute or charming.
   In the abstract, Stuhlbarg’s twinkly-eyed sidekick suggests Joe Pesci in Lethal Weapon 2 by way of late-period Robin Williams with an alien twist, but Stuhlbarg makes a character that easily could have come across as precious into a surprisingly palatable, even charming man. May 24, 2012, Nathan Rabin, “Film: Reviews: Men In Black 3”, in The Onion AV Club
6. (colloquial) Thorough; utter.
   a precious rascal

noun

1. Someone (or something) who is loved; a darling.
   “It isn't fair, my precious, is it, to ask us what it's got in its nassty little pocketses?” 1937, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
   She sat down with the dogs in her lap. "I won't neglect you for any one, will I, my preciouses?" 1909, Mrs. Teignmouth Shore, The Pride of the Graftons, page 57

adv

1. Very; an intensifier.
   There is precious little we can do.
   precious few pictures of him exist