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Flourish   /flˈərɪʃ/   Listen
verb
Flourish  v. t.  
1.
To adorn with flowers orbeautiful figures, either natural or artificial; to ornament with anything showy; to embellish. (Obs.)
2.
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. (Obs.) "Sith that the justice of your title to him Doth flourish the deceit."
3.
To move in bold or irregular figures; to swing about in circles or vibrations by way of show or triumph; to brandish. "And flourishes his blade in spite of me."
4.
To develop; to make thrive; to expand. (Obs.) "Bottoms of thread... which with a good needle, perhaps may be flourished into large works."


Flourish  v. i.  (past & past part. flourished; pres. part. flourishing)  
1.
To grow luxuriantly; to increase and enlarge, as a healthy growing plant; a thrive. "A tree thrives and flourishes in a kindly... soil."
2.
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. "When all the workers of iniquity do flourish." "Bad men as frequently prosper and flourish, and that by the means of their wickedness." "We say Of those that held their heads above the crowd, They flourished then or then."
3.
To use florid language; to indulge in rhetorical figures and lofty expressions; to be flowery. "They dilate... and flourish long on little incidents."
4.
To make bold and sweeping, fanciful, or wanton movements, by way of ornament, parade, bravado, etc.; to play with fantastic and irregular motion. "Impetuous spread The stream, and smoking flourished o'er his head."
5.
To make ornamental strokes with the pen; to write graceful, decorative figures.
6.
To execute an irregular or fanciful strain of music, by way of ornament or prelude. "Why do the emperor's trumpets flourish thus?"
7.
To boast; to vaunt; to brag.


noun
Flourish  n.  (pl. flourishes)  
1.
A flourishing condition; prosperity; vigor. (Archaic) "The Roman monarchy, in her highest flourish, never had the like."
2.
Decoration; ornament; beauty. "The flourish of his sober youth Was the pride of naked truth."
3.
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. "He lards with flourishes his long harangue."
4.
A fanciful stroke of the pen or graver; a merely decorative figure. "The neat characters and flourishes of a Bible curiously printed."
5.
A fantastic or decorative musical passage; a strain of triumph or bravado, not forming part of a regular musical composition; a cal; a fanfare. "A flourish, trumpets! strike alarum, drums!"
6.
The waving of a weapon or other thing; a brandishing; as, the flourish of a sword.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Flourish" Quotes from Famous Books



... Agora "to tell or to hear some new thing"[] will be followed by equally delightful idling and conversation later in the day at the Gymnasia, and later still, probably, at the dinner-party. Easy and unconventional are the personal greetings. A little shaking out of the mantle, an indescribable flourish with the hands. A free Greek will despise himself for "bowing," even to the Great King. To clasp hands implies exchanging a pledge, something for more than ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... there is such a fixation in many nations; but, on the other hand, all nations are not alike in mental organization, and another point has been established, that only when some favourable circumstances have settled a people in one place, do arts and social arrangements get leave to flourish. If we were to limit our view to humbly endowed nations, or the common class of minds in those called civilized, we should see absolutely no conceivable power for the origination of new ideas and devices. But let us look ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... He carried, of course, an umbrella—that was part of his full dress—and the basket—he walked between her and the cart track. She bowed sedately to Rawson-Clew, and the young man, becoming tardily aware of it, took off his hat, rather late, and with a sweeping foreign flourish. She wore a pair of cotton gloves, and lifted her dress a few inches, and glanced shyly up at her escort now and then as he talked. They were speaking Dutch, and she was behaving Dutch, as plain and demure a person as it was possible to imagine, until she looked back, then Rawson-Clew ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... over; the earth, bronzed by the summer heat, is resting after her labour and nature is making variations in the ochres and umbers that in spring were half hidden, huddled together in the steep places where nothing will flourish; the stubble shows in lines of pale yellow on the brown earth among patches of almost colourless green and other patches black with burning which change the value of the olives, pistachios, carubas ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... adds, that he deserved death By law, and law should inviolate, That none offence could greater be uneath, And yet the place the fault did aggravate: If he escapes, that mischief would take breath, And flourish bold in spite of rule and state; And that Gernando's friends would venge the wrong, Although to ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso


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