Precious means of very great value. Precious metals, precious stones, precious time, something precious to her.
It covers both money value and emotional value, and the second is the warmer use. Precious stones and precious metals are the technical terms in jewellery and trade. There is a third sense, and it is critical: a precious manner is affected and over-refined — he is very precious about his coffee — which is a common British put-down. Note precious little, meaning very little indeed, which is a fixed intensifier and always slightly exasperated.
1adjectivepreciousOf very great value.
“Water was the most precious thing in the camp.”
synonyms: valuable, priceless, treasured
2adjectivelovedMuch loved.
“The photographs are precious to her and worth nothing to anybody else.”
3adjectiveaffectedAffected and over-refined.
“He is a bit precious about which mug he uses.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
precious is a degree of value.
Also accepted in games: valuable
Latin pretiosus comes from pretium, a price — the same root as price, praise and appreciate. Something precious is literally something with a price on it, and the sense of emotional value came from the sense of monetary value rather than the other way round.
Latin
pretiōsus — of great value, costly, dear, precious
Old French
precios — valuable, costly, precious, beloved, also affected, finical
Middle English
precious
English, today
precious
Built from
Middle English precious, 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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA