Definition of flourish
- v. i. - To grow luxuriantly; to increase and enlarge, as a
healthy growing plant; a thrive.
- v. i. - To be prosperous; to increase in wealth, honor,
comfort, happiness, or whatever is desirable; to thrive; to be
prominent and influental; specifically, of authors, painters, etc., to
be in a state of activity or production.
- v. i. - To use florid language; to indulge in rhetorical
figures and lofty expressions; to be flowery.
- v. i. - To make bold and sweeping, fanciful, or wanton
movements, by way of ornament, parade, bravado, etc.; to play with
fantastic and irregular motion.
- v. i. - To make ornamental strokes with the pen; to write
graceful, decorative figures.
- v. i. - To execute an irregular or fanciful strain of music,
by way of ornament or prelude.
- v. i. - To boast; to vaunt; to brag.
- v. t. - To adorn with flowers orbeautiful figures, either
natural or artificial; to ornament with anything showy; to embellish.
- v. t. - To embellish with the flowers of diction; to adorn
with rhetorical figures; to grace with ostentatious eloquence; to set
off with a parade of words.
- v. t. - To move in bold or irregular figures; to swing about
in circles or vibrations by way of show or triumph; to brandish.
- v. t. - To develop; to make thrive; to expand.
- n. - A flourishing condition; prosperity; vigor.
- n. - Decoration; ornament; beauty.
- n. - Something made or performed in a fanciful, wanton, or
vaunting manner, by way of ostentation, to excite admiration, etc.;
ostentatious embellishment; ambitious copiousness or amplification;
parade of words and figures; show; as, a flourish of rhetoric or of
wit.
- n. - A fanciful stroke of the pen or graver; a merely
decorative figure.
- n. - A fantastic or decorative musical passage; a strain of
triumph or bravado, not forming part of a regular musical composition;
a cal; a fanfare.
- n. - The waving of a weapon or other thing; a brandishing; as,
the flourish of a sword.