Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Characterized by vivid description or explicit details that are meant to provoke or shock.
  • adjective Characterized by shocking or outrageous behavior.
  • adjective Bright and intense in color; vivid.
  • adjective Sallow or pallid.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pale; wan; ghastly; of the color or appearance of dull smoky flames; having the character of a light which does not show the colors of objects.
  • Lighted up with a ghastly glare; combining light and gloom.
  • In botany and zoology, having a dirty-brown color; slightly clouded.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Pale yellow; ghastly pale; wan; gloomy; dismal.
  • adjective (Bot.) Having a brown color tinged with red, as of flame seen through smoke.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) Of a color tinged with purple, yellow, and gray.
  • adjective Vivid, sensational, or shocking; graphic or melodramatic.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Shocking, horrifying.
  • adjective Melodramatic.
  • adjective Ghastly, pale, wan in appearance.
  • adjective Being of a light yellow hue.
  • adjective botany Having a brown colour tinged with red, as of flame seen through smoke.
  • adjective zoology Having a colour tinged with purple, yellow, and grey.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective horrible in fierceness or savagery
  • adjective ghastly pale
  • adjective glaringly vivid and graphic; marked by sensationalism
  • adjective shining with an unnatural red glow as of fire seen through smoke

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin lūridus, pale, from lūror, paleness.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin lūridus ("pale yellow, wan")

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Examples

  • On the day of the murder, Albert DeSalvothe man who would eventually confess in lurid detail to the Strangler's crimesis also in Belmont, working as a carpenter at the Jungers 'home.

    A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger: Book summary 2010

  • If pop really did eat itself some 20-odd years ago, then recent months have seen it spew up the contents of its stomach in lurid fashion.

    Witch house and the musicians taking us back to the future Tim Jonze 2010

  • The plays I had been in, with my parts underlined in lurid orange.

    Excerpt: In A Dark Wood by Amanda Craig 2002

  • Its genius was frankly militaristic, its history is written in lurid characters before our eyes.

    Annual Meeting and Ladies Night/Our Nation Considered as an Ethical Idea 1922

  • Yes, Jack laughed and bouyed up the spirits of the Ranch while his dream castle ascended in lurid smoke that hot August night.

    Jack London:Wolf House, A Unique Memorial 1921

  • Then, when the wool was wetted, or when some other teams behind disputed the right of way in lurid terms which Lady Bridget was now beginning to accept as inevitably concomitant with bullocks, the first dray would proceed, all the cattle bells jingling and making, in the distance, not unpleasant music.

    Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land 1915

  • Impossible to describe without using the word lurid, Leave Her to Heaven features more perverse activity than any number of more celebrated cult faves-including Nicholas Ray's infamous Joan Crawford western

    New York Press 2009

  • Impossible to describe without using the word lurid, Leave Her to Heaven features more perverse activity than any number of more celebrated cult faves-including Nicholas Ray's infamous Joan Crawford western

    New York Press 2009

  • Caplan’s willingness to embrace the darkness, however, is what makes this book so important: It articulates in lurid detail the obscene id of Chicago-school, Grover-Norquist-style, free market fundamentalism (a term Caplan spends a chapter rebutting).

    Bryan Gets Some Pushback, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • Flanagan creates these imaginary school-supply-closet trysts — rendering them in lurid detail — in order to set up a false choice: if it’s being treated like glass or treated like dirt, most of us would choose glass.

    Letters to the Editor 2006

  • Even the word lurid, which goes hand-in-hand with the writings of the yellow press, takes its roots for the Latin luridus, meaning “pale yellow, ghastly, the color of bruises.”

    Gamboge, A Sunny Yellow with a Deadly Past Katy Kelleher 2023

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