Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Excessively ornate or complex in style or language; grandiloquent: turgid prose.
- adj. Swollen or distended, as from a fluid; bloated: a turgid bladder; turgid veins.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In botany, distended by water or other liquid : said primarily of cells or celluar tissue.
- Swollen; bloated; tumid; distended beyond its natural or usual state by some internal agent or expansive force: often applied to an enlarged part of the body.
- Tumid; pompous; inflated; bombastic: as, a turgid style.
- Synonyms Swollen, puffed up.
- Stilted, grandiloquent. See turgidness.
Wiktionary
- adj. Distended beyond the natural state by some internal agent, especially fluid, or expansive force.
- adj. of language or style Tediously pompous or bombastic.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Distended beyond the natural state by some internal agent or expansive force; swelled; swollen; bloated; inflated; tumid; -- especially applied to an enlarged part of the body.
- adj. Swelling in style or language; vainly ostentatious; bombastic; pompous.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. ostentatiously lofty in style
- adj. abnormally distended especially by fluids or gas
Etymologies
- From Latin turgidus ("swollen, inflated"), from Latin turgeō ("to swell"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin turgidus, from turgēre, to be swollen. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Writing requires discipline, and it can be taught, but you don't find it in turgid poems about Bad Daddies and The Struggle to Be Me and all the other flat, morbid, narcissistic writing that is encouraged by bad teaching.”
“MATTHEW GOODE has slammed his new movie LEAP YEAR as "turgid" - insisting the AMY ADAMS movie will be labelled "the worst film of 2010.”
“February 24th, 2010 more images more imagesMATTHEW GOODE has slammed his new movie LEAP YEAR as "turgid" - insisting the AMY ADAMS movie will be labelled "the worst film of 2010.”
Gaea Times (by Simple Thoughts) Breaking News and incisive views 24/7
“As Gunn says in 'Players': Listen, I spent most of this year trapped in what I can only describe as a turgid supernatural soap-opera.”
“The intake of air can be minimised by cutting when the transpiration of the plant is low and both stem and bloom are turgid, that is the cells are full of water and stretched to their fullest limit so that stem and bloom are stiff and solid, and by plunging the cut stems straight away into water, preferably warm water as this tends to be taken up more quickly and thus breaks any air lock.”
“It got trashed, but there are great sequences in there, but the overall effect is kind of turgid in a certain way.”
“In Pollack's case, I consider Out of Africa to be Oscar bait, critics bait, the kind of turgid lugubrious epic that comes along every so often and which just isn't really very good.”
“Isn't there another grouchy, unproductive and anonymous, online malcontent - one who shares your discomfort for "turgid" things - for for you to play with, say losergrrl, for instance?”
"This man is a clear-eyed pragmatist who will get the job done" — says Biden of Obama.
“But I have come to the conclusion that there is more than one spewer of insulting, yes "turgid" prose, alike as they may be.”
"This man is a clear-eyed pragmatist who will get the job done" — says Biden of Obama.
“What's left must be relentlessly prodded to provide the kind of turgid prose that I'm inordinately fond of.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘turgid’.
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Iaan
dirigisme, dystopia, cacotopia, ex ante, veritable, indefatigable, curmudgeon, desultory, antediluvian, transmogrify, pendent, elongate and 269 more...
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phrontistery-t
from phrontistery.info
tyromancy, tyroma, tyroid, tyriasis, tyrannicide, typtology, typothetae, typomania, typography, typographia, typhonic, typhomania and 930 more...
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allover
reintegrate, spight, surveillant, harmonize, Colophon, workplace, bigoted, unsighted, bridgework, salutation, voltmeter, octane and 159 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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words 1
Traduce, Ramify, precipitous, rapture, adumbrate, knell, smolder, vagary, choleric, sibylline, hypocritical, jejune and 135 more...
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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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From reading
Collected from reading
venerate, reprobate, reticent, adoration, ethereal, ephemeral, equivocal, contumacious, heinous, solicitous, agnostic, aberration and 335 more...
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Ballardian
All things descriptive from JG
Ballardoperation mindfuck, pataphysics, wahrheitssensible..., polymorphism, postprandial, covalent, stygian, lucus a non lucendo, kafkaesque, leitmotif, fugacious, ablate and 77 more...
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gross
corpuscle, globule, botched, botulism, pustulent, swampy, splenic, distended, turgid, maw, retch, spew and 13 more...
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New Words
idiopathic, quidditas, cloacal, peregrination, cyclamen, expatiate, pedantic, salonniere, manque, pelagic, exogenous, pellucid and 83 more...
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gre words
convoluted, deride, melancholy, antagonize, antagonize, deference, portentous, prodigious, ruminate, ineffable, turgid, mossy and 58 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 1896 more...
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Words For Novel
viridity, effigy, paragon, congested, acrid, lilting, clandestine, plethora, accolade, sardonic, naïve, reckoning and 285 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for turgid.
Casey "The air between them was turgid with contempt and jealousy." From Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. Feb 12, 2011
lweber5@scf.edu Dictionary.com, turgid leeches having had their fill of blood Nov 5, 2010
bilby *frogapplauds* Nov 12, 2008
reesetee Let's hear it for serendipity! Nov 12, 2008
Prolagus I didn't know any meaning other than Wordnet #3 (abnormally distended) until today: it was the "word of the day" on one of those free newspapers that I found on the table at the test center where I was about to take my GRE test.
And it was one of the words for the verbal section! Nov 12, 2008
brtom "But as before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended ..."
Joyce, Ulysses, 14 Jan 27, 2007