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What is "decorative"

Crossword clues for decorative

decorative
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
decorative
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
purely
▪ These arches are purely decorative, so no cutting of brickwork is needed.
▪ Other Simlawood items are purely decorative.
very
▪ These wheels were very good workers and many replicas have been built; some very decorative specimens.
▪ It is not very decorative and is of limited importance to aquarists.
▪ There is also a wide range of paving materials that can create a very decorative effect.
▪ It is a minute, very decorative herb with a thin and creeping rooting system.
▪ The plant is light green and very decorative.
▪ A comparatively rare plant, Acorus is propagated with difficulty but it is a very decorative plant when used in aquariums.
▪ It is a very decorative plant.
▪ The plant is very decorative with its dark-veined leaves.
■ NOUN
art
▪ Their new collection also includes scarves, ties and braces and all designs are based on antique decorative arts.
▪ The Pageant of the Masters uses live models to re- create notable paintings, sculptures and decorative art.
▪ Museums of design or decorative arts validate their collections in different terms.
▪ In the field of eighteenth-century art, we've had paintings, decorative arts and period rooms divorced from each other.
▪ There are also some decorative arts scattered around the museum, and one wishes there were more.
▪ More than forty dealers in furniture and the decorative arts will participate and proceeds go to the Carnegie Museum of Art.
▪ There will be space devoted to prints and drawings, as well as sculpture and the decorative arts.
▪ There were no clear distinctions between the fine and the decorative arts in Mannerist or Baroque Prague.
scheme
▪ The decorative scheme incorporates portrait Roman heads, animals, birds, fishes and Roman geometrical decorative forms.
▪ From an early date the imperial palaces at Constantinople incorporated decorative schemes that emphasized and glorified imperial power and dominion.
▪ There were minor additions made to the decorative scheme in the 19C.
style
▪ Internally the house is bright and airy with stripped doors and has a light decorative style.
▪ But his decorative style is as spartan as any Internationalist.
▪ The simpler decorative style of the wide boats echoes that of the seagoing ships alongside which they were built.
touch
▪ A generous pile of cushions, or a treasured marble bust can add the required decorative touch.
▪ Left: Most boatyards had a signwriter who painted the boats in their company liveries and added the decorative touches.
▪ It is surprising the difference such a relatively small decorative touch can make to an ordinary room or staircase.
▪ Shaped hemlines are just one way to add a decorative touch.
▪ Adding a decorative touch to the plain brick wall, they also give the room quite a Continental feel.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Cut out decorative shapes with a cookie cutter.
▪ Many of the nature books are purely decorative, but a few are very informative.
▪ The poem had been embroidered on a pretty decorative pillow.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A generous pile of cushions, or a treasured marble bust can add the required decorative touch.
▪ A shelf for decorative plates running at picture rail height will instantly bring an interior to life.
▪ Lamps, decorative objects, rugs, wall coverings and fabrics are only a few of the most commonly licensed home furnishings.
▪ Prices, where stated at all, were scribbled in decorative script upon tiny cards, an afterthought.
▪ The decorative scheme incorporates portrait Roman heads, animals, birds, fishes and Roman geometrical decorative forms.
▪ The reality in these stories is only decorative.
▪ There's no point in getting all the other decorative details perfect if your plates and knives and forks are all wrong.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Decorative

Decorative \Dec"o*ra*tive\ (d[e^]k"[-o]*r[.a]*t[i^]v or d[e^]k"[-o]*r[asl]*t[i^]v), a. [Cf. F. d['e]coratif.] Suited to decorate or embellish; adorning. -- Dec"o*ra*tive*ness, n.

Decorative art, fine art which has for its end ornamentation, rather than the representation of objects or events.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
decorative

early 15c., from Middle French decoratif, from decorat-, past participle stem of Latin decorare (see decorate).

Wiktionary
decorative

a. That serves to decorate n. A plant, tile, etc. intended for use as decoration.

WordNet
decorative

adj. serving an esthetic rather than a useful purpose; "cosmetic fenders on cars"; "the buildings were utilitarian rather than decorative" [syn: cosmetic, ornamental]

Usage examples of "decorative".

Africa, to the work in wood and metal of the Bambara of the upper Niger and a host of others: the products of an African consciousness and cosmogony and care for the decorative arts of life that made, and make, a world of their own.

The blooms are large and brilliant in colour, and their shaggy forms give them an effect which is decorative both in the garden and vase.

The Bottoms was so crowded with an array of objects in decorative brass that Rosie had difficulty locating the bell-push at first.

During our long sea war with Landsing, the cavalla had been seen as a decorative branch of our military, displaying the buffed and polished family armor and riding their plumed horses for ceremonial occasions, but doing little more.

Anywhere else it would have been preposterous as a decorative presentment, but here, in this little nook where the coureurs de bois, the halfbreeds, the traders and the missionaries had founded a centre of assembly, it was the best possible expression in the life so formed at hap-hazard, and so controlled by the coarsest and narrowest influences.

The two men were clad in raggedy snowmobile suits that smelled of crankcase oil and bore ten years of decorative sew-on Quest patches.

A decorative, gauzy material demurely filled in the decolletage of the fitted bodice that dipped to a deep vee in front.

Anglo-Saxon decorative art employed in the south of England an animal-style influenced by the Irish, and in the north a particularly fruitful motif borrowed from Syrian craftsmen who had immigrated to northern England -- namely regularly curving ornament, vine-scroll with animals -- either leaping, climbing, or flying -- decoratively disposed within it.

He was an outdoor dilletante, tan and fit and urbane all at the same time, an eminently decorative guest.

From the castle below the comforting, muted noise of soldiers, hooves on cobblestones, an occasional throaty laugh wafting upwards with the smoke and smells of the cooking fires through the decorative, bowman openings in the vast walls, not yet shuttered against the night chill.

The first room is an armoury, in which all kinds of arms are arranged, in a decorative way, covering the ceiling and the walls with strange patterns.

All the frescos, mosaics, and altar-pieces had a decorative motive in their coloring and setting.

The head-ends of the tanks protruded a couple of feet from their shoulder-height plyboard cubicles, like stupidly baroque brass coffins covered with cheap decorative detail.

Yet the lower reaches of the garden, the fantastically sculpted ice fountains, and the decorative benches all showed signs of malicious vandalism.

Either as a cut flower, or a decorative subject for the borders or rockwork, it is a first-rate plant, being neat and showy.