Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Flushed with rosy color; ruddy.
- adj. Very ornate; flowery: a florid prose style.
- adj. Archaic Healthy.
- adj. Obsolete Abounding in or covered with flowers.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Covered or abounding with flowers; flowery; blooming.
- Bright in color; specifically, flushed with red; of a lively red color: as, a florid countenance; a florid cheek.
- Flowery in appearance or effect; highly embellished or decorated; loaded with ornamentation: as, florid architecture; florid music.
- Embellished with flowers of rhetoric; enriched with lively figures; highly ornate; overwrought in expression: as, a florid style; florid eloquence.
Wiktionary
- adj. Having a rosy or pale red colour; ruddy.
- adj. Elaborately ornate; flowery.
- adj. In a blatant, vivid, or highly disorganized state.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. rare Covered with flowers; abounding in flowers; flowery.
- adj. Bright in color; flushed with red; of a lively reddish color.
- adj. Embellished with flowers of rhetoric; enriched to excess with figures; excessively ornate
- adj. (Mus.) Flowery; ornamental; running in rapid melodic figures, divisions, or passages, as in variations; full of fioriture or little ornamentations.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. elaborately or excessively ornamented
- adj. inclined to a healthy reddish color often associated with outdoor life
Etymologies
- French floride, from Latin flōridus, from flōs, flōr-, flower; see bhel-3 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Anorexia or bulimia in florid or subclinical form now afflicts 40 percent of women at some time in their college career.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The new building was in what may be called the florid shingle-Gothic manner.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘florid’.
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
zealot, wistful, welter, wary, whimsical, warranted, vortex, vivisection, volatile, vitiate, viscous, visage and 787 more...
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color (red)
tiara's color lists rebuilt :)
( visual, colors, red, descriptive, randomness )red, Red, Pink, Cloud, Salmon, Rose, Coral(Pink/Red/Dark), Cramoisy/Modena/C..., Raspberry, Rubious/Ruby, Tomato, Sanguineous/Blood and 483 more...
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EN - eloquence in public speaking
Key words from "The Training of a Public Speaker" by Grenville Kleiser (New York and London, 1920)
beget, imago, Vespasian, languid, studied, judgment, dwindle, artifice, contribute, observe, sonorous, gladiator and 264 more...
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Tristram Shandy
souse, meet, sententious, propound, boot, casuistry, avoirdupois, akimbo, disport, lenity, succussation, sweetbread and 158 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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January 2012
bloviate, pastiche, apparat, facile, paroxysm, pique, bedfellow, pedigree, tutelage, protege, protégé, retroactive and 196 more...
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"Brave New World"
From the book "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, which I purchased by accident.
brevity, florid, callow, sibilant, boskage, apopletic, asceptic, setentious, decant, predestine, viviparous, proliferate and 7 more...
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Deadwood Dick
venison, vim, sanguine, gulch, maudlin, hirsute, pare, cavalcade, twain, repast, cognomen, florid and 3 more...
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Rococo
Words that describe the decadent Rococo art of the early 18th Century
ornate, love, lust, fat, silk, florid, amorous, drunken, cherubic, decadent, excess, velvet and 31 more...
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Colors/Patterns/Prints/Textures
fritillary, chartreuse, tortoise-shell, brindle, burnt orange, cerulean, amaranth, sandy, amber, mold, fungus, kiwi and 65 more...
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man gre
abase, abeyance, abreast, abscission, abscond, abyss, accede, accretion, acerbic, acidulous, acumen, adulterate and 483 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1824 more...
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texture
words of diversity
dappled, amorphous, sinuous, roughage, gingham, mottled, rococo, ruddy, florid, ornate, sinewy, pied and 2 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for florid.

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