Definitions

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

  • adjective Swollen; distended. Used of a body part or organ.
  • adjective Of a bulging shape; protuberant.
  • adjective Overblown; bombastic.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Swollen; slightly inflated; tumefied: as, a tumid leg; tumid flesh.
  • Protuberant; rising above the level.
  • Swelling in sound or sense; pompous; bombastic; inflated: as, a tumid expression; a tumid style.

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

  • adjective Swelled, enlarged, or distended
  • adjective Rising above the level; protuberant.
  • adjective Swelling in sound or sense; pompous; puffy; inflated; bombastic; falsely sublime; turgid.

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

  • adjective swollen, enlarged, bulging
  • adjective cancerous, unhealthy

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

  • adjective abnormally distended especially by fluids or gas
  • adjective ostentatiously lofty in style
  • adjective of sexual organs; stiff and rigid

Etymologies

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

[Latin tumidus, from tumēre, to swell; see teuə- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin tumidus ("swollen").

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Examples

  • = veil = is thick, and the annulus narrow and very thick or "tumid," easily breaking up and disappearing.

    Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. George Francis Atkinson 1886

  • The outermost part is a tough scab-like purple scale, but within is a tumid floret of a highly complex design.

    Country diary: Claxton, Norfolk 2011

  • The buttons of her blouse tug around her tumid breasts.

    Desilu, Three Cameras 2009

  • It would be so easy to write the article off as the ramblings of a gynophobic choad, but loath as I am to admit it, there is a faint miasma of truth hovering in that tumid swamp.

    Frankie Thomas: Enter the Contest to Make Christopher Hitchens Laugh! 2008

  • Times readers who got through the tumid chunk he offered were reminded that dust has its purposes.

    Good and Grumpy 2006

  • In a labial dawn I savoured salty draughts of liquor springing from your tumid lips, luxuriated in a magnanimity your primal crouch expressed, heard half-suppressed love-cries tell the tumult in your loins.

    When I Close My Eyes (rev) Ivan Donn Carswell 2008

  • Times readers who got through the tumid chunk he offered were reminded that dust has its purposes.

    Good and Grumpy 2006

  • The whorls are posteriorly gibbose or tumid at the sutures, and the callus is less spreading than in others of the genus.

    The Journals of John McDouall Stuart 2007

  • The thing jumped into my mind and stopped its tumid flow for a moment.

    In the Days of the Comet Herbert George 2006

  • On his left shin there were two bruises, one a leaden yellow graduating here and there into purple, and another, obviously of more recent date, of a blotchy red — tumid and threatening.

    The Wheels of Chance: a bicycling idyll Herbert George 2006

Comments

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  • "Now there was the easy motion of the boat, the creak of thole-pins, the sea-air on his stiff, tumid, sightless face; and now among the perceptions that failed him were those of pain and of time..."

    --Patrick O'Brian, The Nutmeg of Consolation, 371

    March 9, 2008