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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Flushed with rosy color; ruddy.
  2. adj. Very ornate; flowery: a florid prose style.
  3. adj. Archaic Healthy.
  4. adj. Obsolete Abounding in or covered with flowers.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Covered or abounding with flowers; flowery; blooming.
  2. Bright in color; specifically, flushed with red; of a lively red color: as, a florid countenance; a florid cheek.
  3. Flowery in appearance or effect; highly embellished or decorated; loaded with ornamentation: as, florid architecture; florid music.
  4. Embellished with flowers of rhetoric; enriched with lively figures; highly ornate; overwrought in expression: as, a florid style; florid eloquence.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. having a rosy or pale red colour; ruddy
  2. adj. elaborately ornate; flowery

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Covered with flowers; abounding in flowers; flowery.
  2. adj. Bright in color; flushed with red; of a lively reddish color.
  3. adj. Embellished with flowers of rhetoric; enriched to excess with figures; excessively ornate
  4. adj. Flowery; ornamental; running in rapid melodic figures, divisions, or passages, as in variations; full of fioriture or little ornamentations.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. elaborately or excessively ornamented
  2. adj. inclined to a healthy reddish color often associated with outdoor life

Etymologies

  1. French floride, from Latin flōridus, from flōs, flōr-, flower; see bhel-3 in Indo-European roots.

Examples

  • “Anorexia or bulimia in florid or subclinical form now afflicts 40 percent of women at some time in their college career.”

    National Wimp Crisis | Impact Lab

  • “LSD intoxication is characterized by florid visual distortions—arrays of colors, often dark green or brown; dramatic changes in the shapes or sizes of familiar objects—and overwhelming delusions of omnipotence.”

    Simon & Schuster: Over the Edge

  • “She insisted upon being stabbed on the stage, and she had rigged up a kitchen carving-knife with a handle of gilt paper, ornamented with various breastpins of the girls, which was celebrated in florid terms in her part of the drama as a Tyrian dagger.”

    Oldtown Folks

  • “Gildas 132 describes in florid language the improvements of agriculture, the foreign trade which flowed with every tide into the Thames and the Severn the solid and lofty construction of public and private edifices; he accuses the sinful luxury of the British people; of a people, according to the same writer, ignorant of the most simple arts, and incapable, without the aid of the Romans, of providing walls of stone, or weapons of iron, for the defence of their native land.”

    The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

  • “I did a similar thing when I was trying to ground my prose style on a scale of "simple" to "florid" - read a couple of my favorite books and marked them up to figure out how to place myself on that scale in a spot I liked.”

    Study Hall

  • “The new building was in what may be called the florid shingle-Gothic manner.”

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 29, March, 1860

  • “The rosette is Egyptian; and the honeysuckle, which Mr. Petrie has identified as a florid variety of the lotus pattern, (44) is also distinctly Egyptian.”

    Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers

  • “What with his haste and a certain dash, which, according to our mood, we may call florid or splendid, he seems to stand among poets where Rubens does among painters, -- greater, perhaps, as a colorist than an artist, yet great here also, if we compare him with any but the first.”

    Among My Books First Series

  • “This early video traffics in some of the elements visuals, as well as what Ars Technica has called a "florid bombasticism" of what would become the Anonymous image.”

    Slate Articles

  • “In like manner in the later, which has been called the florid style of Gothic architecture, there are buildings astonishingly rich and elaborate; but we find this excess of ornament supported and rendered practicable by a principle of simplicity in design and construction.”

    Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth

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Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘florid’.

Comments

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  • bilby "In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o’clock, meridian—his dinner hour—it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing—but, as it were, with a gradual wane—till 6 o’clock, P. M. or thereabouts, after which I saw no more of the proprietor of the face, which gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with the like regularity and undiminished glory."
    - Herman Melville, 'Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street'. Sep 8, 2009

  • shadesofinsanity @ Eva:
    I've never heard of that word. Very nice! :)

    It's sad how much your thesaurus leaves out. :P Feb 1, 2009

  • eva Florid always makes me think of "rubicund." Don't you wish there were a word "floribund"? Feb 1, 2009

  • shadesofinsanity Means reddish. Great adjective. Feb 1, 2009

‘florid’ has been looked up 3072 times, loved by 6 people, added to 79 lists, commented on 4 times, and has a Scrabble score of 10.