Crossword clues for flourish
flourish
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Flourish \Flour"ish\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Flourished; p. pr. & vb. n. Flourishing.] [OE. florisshen, flurisshen, OF. flurir, F. fleurir, fr. L. florere to bloom, fr. flos, floris, flower. See Flower, and -ish.]
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To grow luxuriantly; to increase and enlarge, as a healthy growing plant; a thrive.
A tree thrives and flourishes in a kindly . . . soil.
--Bp. Horne. -
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.
--Ps. xcii 7Bad men as frequently prosper and flourish, and that by the means of their wickedness.
--Nelson.We say Of those that held their heads above the crowd, They flourished then or then.
--Tennyson. -
To use florid language; to indulge in rhetorical figures and lofty expressions; to be flowery.
They dilate . . . and flourish long on little incidents.
--J. Watts. -
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.
--Pope. To make ornamental strokes with the pen; to write graceful, decorative figures.
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To execute an irregular or fanciful strain of music, by way of ornament or prelude.
Why do the emperor's trumpets flourish thus?
--Shak. To boast; to vaunt; to brag.
--Pope.
Flourish \Flour"ish\, v. t.
To adorn with flowers orbeautiful figures, either natural or artificial; to ornament with anything showy; to embellish. [Obs.]
--Fenton.-
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.
--Shak. -
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.
--Shak. -
To develop; to make thrive; to expand. [Obs.]
Bottoms of thread . . . which with a good needle, perhaps may be flourished into large works.
--Bacon.
Flourish \Flour"ish\, n.; pl. Flourishes.
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A flourishing condition; prosperity; vigor. [Archaic]
The Roman monarchy, in her highest flourish, never had the like.
--Howell. -
Decoration; ornament; beauty.
The flourish of his sober youth Was the pride of naked truth.
--Crashaw. -
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.
--Dryden. -
A fanciful stroke of the pen or graver; a merely decorative figure.
The neat characters and flourishes of a Bible curiously printed.
--Boyle. -
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!
--Shak. The waving of a weapon or other thing; a brandishing; as, the flourish of a sword.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
c.1300, "to blossom, grow" (intransitive), from Old French floriss-, stem of florir "to blossom, flower, bloom; prosper, flourish," from Latin florere "to bloom, blossom, flower," figuratively "to flourish, be prosperous," from flos "a flower" (see flora). Metaphoric sense of "thrive" is mid-14c. in English. Transitive meaning "brandish (a weapon), hold in the hand and wave about" is from late 14c. Related: Flourished; flourishing.
c.1500, "a blossom," from flourish (v.). Meaning "an ostentatious waving of a weapon" is from 1550s; that of "excessive literary or rhetorical embellishment" is from c.1600; in reference to decorative curves in penmanship, 1650s; as "a fanfare of trumpets," 1590s.
Wiktionary
n. 1 A dramatic gesture such as the waving of a flag. 2 An ornamentation. 3 (context music English) A ceremonious passage such as a fanfare. 4 (context architecture English) A decorative embellishment on a building. vb. (context intransitive English) To thrive or grow well.
WordNet
n. a showy gesture; "she entered with a great flourish"
an ornamental embellishment in writing
a display of ornamental speech or language
the act of waving [syn: brandish]
(music) a short lively tune played on brass instruments; "he entered to a flourish of trumpets"; "her arrival was greeted with a rousing fanfare" [syn: fanfare, tucket]
v. grow stronger; "The economy was booming" [syn: boom, prosper, thrive, get ahead, expand]
move or swing back and forth; "She waved her gun" [syn: brandish, wave]
Wikipedia
Flourish is a 2006 film written, produced and directed by Kevin Palys and starring Jennifer Morrison, Jesse Spencer, Leighton Meester, and Ian Brennan.
The term flourish may refer to:
- Flourish (fanfare), ceremonial music played on a bugle
- A decorative curl or in typography or handwriting, see Swash (typography)
- "to bloom", of a person's or a culture's peak activity; Latin floruit "bloomed" refers to a person's known period of activity.
- Card flourish, a stage magic term for a visual display of skill.
- Especially in Renaissance fencing, Twirling of the weapon as a display of dexterity.
- Flourish (film), a comedic thriller
- Flourishing in positive psychology, is living in an optimal range of human functioning.
Usage examples of "flourish".
New England shall have risen to its intended grandeur, it shall be as carefully recorded among the registers of the literati that Adams flourished in the second century after the exode of its first settlers from Great Britain, as it is now that Cicero was born in the six-hundred-and-forty-seventh year after the building of Rome.
DT popped an ampule with a flourish, as if making a toast, and inhaled.
Chapter Eleven, findings which suggest that the great Andean city of Tiahuanaco flourished during the last Ice Age in the deep, dark, moonless midnight of prehistory.
Along the shore in a never-broken line, the hand, the wooden stylus of this man bent down in fever and raining perspiration, scribbled, ribboned, looped around over and up, across, in, out, stitched, whispered, stayed, then hurried on as if this travelling bacchanal must flourish to its end before the sun was put out by the sea.
West India pirates was at New Providence Island in the Bahama Islands, occupied to-day by the flourishing town of Nassau, now the headquarters of those worthy descendants of the pirates, the bootleggers, who from the old port carry on their exciting and profitable smuggling of whisky into the United States.
Where even the rhododendrons wilted and died, the bloodroot flowers flourished in the hot summer.
European Catharism lie in Bogomilism, a dualist faith that flourished in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Dalmatia from the tenth century onwards.
It was a friendship that flourished during many midnight debates over bourbon and booklore, with neither the right nor the left side of the issues ever gaining much ground.
In the flourishing sled dog community of Two Rivers, an enterprising collector of lost booties had an opportunity to try out all of these variations and decide for himself what sort suited his team.
A sandy soil, where nothing flourishes but weeds and evil beasts of small dimensions, must breed different qualities in its human offspring from one of those fat and fertile spots which the wit whom I have once before noted described so happily that, if I quoted the passage, its brilliancy would spoil one of my pages, as a diamond breastpin sometimes kills the social effect of the wearer, who might have passed for a gentleman without it.
Chinese had any knowledge of burnt bricks when the art flourished in Babylonia.
Don Silvestro, a Camaldolese monk, who flourished at the same time as the illuminator of this MS.
Casuarina, candlenut and kauri pine flourished in abundance beside breadfruit, sago plant, oranges, pineapple, sweet banana and of course the inevitable coconut palm.
Mary made a polite but noncommittal response, and turned to watch the arrival, not of the expected Wharton wagon, but of a particularly well-built haycart from Canons Grange, lined with bales of straw and drawn by a pair of great horses which arched their necks, raised and lowered their great feathered feet and flourished their ribboned tails with all the pride of their warhorse ancestry.
Archie Madden with one hand on his hips and the other palm up for applause, like a matador finishing a neat piece of capework with a flourish.