Definitions

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

  • adjective Flushed with rosy color; ruddy.
  • adjective Very ornate; flowery.
  • adjective Archaic Healthy.
  • adjective Obsolete Abounding in or covered with flowers.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • 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.

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

  • adjective rare Covered with flowers; abounding in flowers; flowery.
  • adjective Bright in color; flushed with red; of a lively reddish color.
  • adjective Embellished with flowers of rhetoric; enriched to excess with figures; excessively ornate
  • adjective (Mus.) Flowery; ornamental; running in rapid melodic figures, divisions, or passages, as in variations; full of fioriture or little ornamentations.

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

  • adjective Having a rosy or pale red colour; ruddy.
  • adjective Elaborately ornate; flowery.
  • adjective In a blatant, vivid, or highly disorganized state.

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

  • adjective elaborately or excessively ornamented
  • adjective inclined to a healthy reddish color often associated with outdoor life

Etymologies

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

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

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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 2006

  • 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.

    Over the Edge Jonathan Kellerman 1987

  • 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.

    Over the Edge Jonathan Kellerman 1987

  • 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.

    Over the Edge Jonathan Kellerman 1987

  • 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 1869

  • 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 1206

  • 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 Janice Hardy 2010

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

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

  • 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 1891

  • 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 James Russell Lowell 1855

Comments

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  • Means reddish. Great adjective.

    February 1, 2009

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

    February 1, 2009

  • @ Eva:

    I've never heard of that word. Very nice! :)

    It's sad how much your thesaurus leaves out. :P

    February 1, 2009

  • "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'.

    September 8, 2009