The Collaborative International Dictionary
Euphuist \Eu"phu*ist\, n. One who affects excessive refinement and elegance of language; -- applied esp. to a class of writers, in the age of Elizabeth, whose productions are marked by affected conceits and high-flown diction.
Wiktionary
n. One who affects excessive refinement and elegance of language; applied especially to a class of writers, in the age of (w: Elizabeth I), whose productions are marked by affected conceits and high-flown diction.
Usage examples of "euphuist".
Queen Elizabeth, complaining of the name for an unlucky one, had re-christened her The Dainty, not without some by-quip, perhaps, at the character of her most dainty captain, Richard Hawkins, the complete seaman and Euphuist afloat, of whom, perhaps, more hereafter.
The essential requirement is to remember that Lyly the dramatist is the same man as Lyly the euphuist, and that his audience was always a company of courtiers, with Queen Elizabeth in their midst, infatuated with admiration for the new phraseology and mode of thought known as Euphuism.
You will recall the Euphuists of England, the Precieuses of France and the Illuminati of the eighteenth century, as well as Les Merveilleux and Les Encroyables.
Our euphuists may pass away like those of the Elizabethan era, or, like the best of them, live in spite of faults with which they were gratuitously trammelled.