precious

1. (derogatory, antiphrastic) Treated with too much reverence.Examples: "He spent hours painting the eyes of the portrait, which his fellow artists regarded as a bit precious."

2. (writing, ironic) Excessively complicated.

3. (informal, followed by about) Extremely protective or strict (about something).Examples: "Writers are often very precious about their work."; "Pro chefs can be very precious about their kit. Watch a bartender trying to borrow a simple, cheap fruit-knife from the kitchen and you'll see what I mean."; "Well, I didn't realize it until almost after the fact. I wrote all these songs very quickly; I did a whole lot of material and wasn't too precious about it. The lyric writing was done in much the same way. I wrote stuff and sang it, and the demos stuck, which is different from what I've done before, when I edited it."

4. (informal, derogatory) Blasted; damned.Examples: "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."

5. (derogatory) Contrived to be cute or charming.Examples: "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."Synonyms: saccharine, syrupy, twee

6. (colloquial) Thorough; utter.Examples: "a precious rascal"