florid
/ˈflɒrɪd
/adjective
1Having a red or flushed complexion: a stout man with a florid face...
- He was a great big fellow with a florid complexion and blue eyes, and was utterly devoid of fear, nothing that came in his direction being too hot for him to handle.
- His features and florid complexion are all too familiar to readers of The Sunday Times, where he provides the savoury delights in the restaurant pages of Style magazine.
- Think of high blood pressure - or hypertension as doctors call it - and you probably think headaches, dizzy spells and a florid complexion.
Synonyms
ruddy, red, red-faced, reddish, rosy, rosy-cheeked, pink, pinkish, roseate, rubicund;
healthy-looking, glowing, fresh;
flushed, blushing, high-coloured, blowsy
archaic sanguine
rare erubescent, rubescent
2Excessively intricate or elaborate: a florid, baroque building...
- In an age when the life of the spirit is besieged by the excesses of a florid globalism, claimants to sole proprietorship of truth have never been more numerous.
- It is sad to hear the veteran struggling with Rossini's florid music as the titular Turk, and both buffo baritones are, frankly, provincial.
- Her gestures, however, can seem too mannered, even by the florid standards of Baroque song recitals.
Synonyms
ornate, fancy, very elaborate, over-elaborate, embellished, curlicued, extravagant, flamboyant, baroque, rococo, fussy, busy, ostentatious, showy, wedding-cake, gingerbread
flowery, flamboyant, high-flown, high-sounding, magniloquent, grandiloquent, ornate, fancy, baroque, orotund, rhetorical, oratorical, bombastic, laboured, strained, overwrought, elaborate, over-elaborate, overblown, overripe, overdone, convoluted, turgid, inflated
informal highfalutin, purple
rare tumid, pleonastic, euphuistic, aureate, Ossianic, fustian, hyperventilated
2.1(Of language) using unusual words or complicated rhetorical devices: his florid and exciting prose...
- Expressing ourselves in quite such florid language about what we are is why fingers are pointed at us.
- That was probably a reaction to the florid language Rothwell used - and an initial response to the content.
- Some judges and magistrates tend to clothe their remarks in florid language which is likely to appeal to reporters.
3 Medicine (Of a disease or its manifestations) occurring in a fully developed form: florid symptoms of psychiatric disorder...
- Or they may come with, or deteriorate by rapidly developing, florid pneumonia or septicaemia with multi-organ failure and die in spite of the usual treatments.
- To our knowledge, this is the first reported case in which florid parvovirus infection and subsequent recovery was documented by sequential bone marrow examination.
- These were associated with florid acute inflammation, including microabscesses, an indication of the acute nature and severity of the process.
Derivatives
floridity
/ noun ...- Hirst's speech was notable not only for its floridity.
- In the furious first movement, Vivaldi unleashes these and other afflictions to music of staggering floridity.
floridly
- The lost art of well-jumping, an odyssey with the best mango in India as its objective, a Corbett-inspired episode starring a man-eating tiger - these could be seen either as images natural to the story, or as floridly exotic elements.
- The film doesn't stint in showing us the results of these dark deeds; while the imagery isn't floridly splattery it doesn't mask things in shadows either.
- The young man, floridly mad, believed that he had been cheated by his family of an inheritance that would have made him extremely rich.
floridness
- By combining the arch floridness of Victorian prose with a present-tense, subtly ironic style, Gray has created a distinctive voice.
Origin
Mid 17th century: from Latin floridus, from flos, flor- 'flower'.