The Collaborative International Dictionary
Flourish \Flour"ish\, n.; pl. Flourishes.
-
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.