Precious

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.

The way my partner looks at me is just so precious.

He spent hours painting the eyes of the portrait, which his fellow artists regarded as a bit precious.

“It isn't fair, my precious, is it, to ask us what it's got in its nassty little pocketses?”

There is precious little we can do.

She and Mma Ramotswe were fortunate, with their reasonably straightforward names of Grace and Precious respectively; she had contemporaries who were not so fortunate and had been saddled by their parents with names that were frankly ridiculous.