Find the word definition

Crossword clues for gaudy

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
gaudy
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a gaudy/garish colour (=loud and usually showing bad taste)
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a gaudy neon sign
▪ I didn't like the decorations - they looked rather gaudy.
▪ She smelled of cheap perfume and wore gaudy clothing and fake costume jewellery.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Another one put washing on to a line, gaudy bedclothes and sombre shirts.
▪ Not only was it gaudy in appearance but the smell wafting from the kitchen was distinctly malodorous.
▪ On the walls, pictures of Mecca and General Zia mingle with gaudy Alpine scenes.
▪ The beautiful lion fish belongs to this gaudy category and is therefore much easier to avoid.
▪ The men who tended the garden were well aware that to modern eyes this planting scheme was gaudy and banal.
▪ Within this area, several males - smaller and less gaudy than the females - establish much smaller territories.
▪ Yet nothing can quite make up for the gaudy excesses of the auto-da-fe.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Gaudy

Gaudy \Gaud"y\, a. [Compar. Gaudier; superl. Gauidiest.]

  1. Ostentatiously fine; showy; gay, but tawdry or meretricious.

    Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy.
    --Shak.

  2. Gay; merry; festal.
    --Tennyson.

    Let's have one other gaudy night.
    --Shak.

Gaudy

Gaudy \Gaud"y\, n.; pl. Gaudies [See Gaud, n.] One of the large beads in the rosary at which the paternoster is recited. [Obs.]
--Gower.

Gaudy

Gaudy \Gaud"y\, n. A feast or festival; -- called also gaud-day and gaudy day. [Oxford Univ.]
--Conybeare.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
gaudy

"showy, tastelessly rich," 1580s, probably ultimately from Middle English gaudi "large, ornamental bead in a rosary" (early 14c.); but there is a parallel sense of gaudy as "full of trickery" (1520s), from Middle English gaud "deception, trick," from gaudi "a jest, trick," possibly from Anglo-French gaudir "be merry, scoff," from Latin gaudere "rejoice" (see joy).\n

\nAlternative etymology of the adjective is from Middle English gaudegrene "yellowish-green" (early 14c.), originally "green dye" obtained from a plant formerly known as weld, from a Germanic source (see weld (n.)), which became gaude in Old French. The English term supposedly shifted sense from "weld-dye" to "bright." As a noun, "feast, festival" 1650s, from gaudy day "day of rejoicing" (1560s).

Wiktionary
gaudy

Etymology 1 a. 1 very showy or ornamented, now especially when excessive, or in a tasteless or vulgar manner 2 (context obsolete English) gay; merry; festive n. One of the large beads in the rosary at which the paternoster is recited. Etymology 2

n. A reunion held by one of the colleges of the University of Oxford for alumni, normally held during the summer vacations.

WordNet
gaudy
  1. adj. tastelessly showy; "a flash car"; "a flashy ring"; "garish colors"; "a gaudy costume"; "loud sport shirts"; "a meretricious yet stylish book"; "tawdry ornaments" [syn: brassy, cheap, flash, flashy, garish, gimcrack, loud, meretricious, tacky, tatty, tawdry, trashy]

  2. (used especially of clothes) marked by conspicuous display [syn: flashy, jazzy, showy, sporty]

  3. n. a celebratory feast held annually at one of the colleges in a British university

  4. [also: gaudiest, gaudier]

Wikipedia
Gaudy

Gaudy or gaudie (from the Latin, "gaudium", meaning "enjoyment" or "merry-making") is a term used to reflect student life in a number of the ancient universities in the United Kingdom as well as other institutions such as Durham University and Reading University. It is generally believed to relate to the traditional student song, De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life), which is commonly known as the Gaudeamus by virtue of its first line.

Usage examples of "gaudy".

Nearly a month of unrelieved campaigning up through the inhospitable mountains had given them the look of ruffiansmostly unwashed, untrimmed and unshaven, showy with gaudy bits of looted Ahrmehnee finery, acrawl with vermin.

Dressed in gaudy tatters and besmudged with dirt, Alec watched gleefully as Seregil juggled, walked ropes, and mugged for the crowd.

Luke, Cleed, Princess Marxia, Baby Liz - all were portrayed in mammoth exaggeration upon the gaudy, painted sheets of canvas.

One was the chasseur Colonel of the Imperial Guard, gaudy in his scarlet pelisse, dark green overalls and colback, a round hat made of thick black fur.

Martian parrots hung limp and fashionless like gaudy rags, and in the courtyard ground the corn-rats came up from their tunnels in the scorching earth to die, squeaking in scores along under the walls.

They were round or oval, frames of wicker and shaped wood covered in hide and painted in gaudy shapes, the swastika-like fylfot, or animals.

Down its crowded corridors swarms a vast gaudy heterogeny of galactic creatures, natives of the worlds of Capella, Arcturus, Altair, Canopus, Polaris, Antares - beings both intelligent and articular, methane-breathing or nitrogen-breathing or argon-breathing, spiny-skinned or skinless, many-armed or many-headed or altogether incorporeal, each a product of a distant and distinctly unique and alien cultural heritage.

You should be in a ballroom with crystal chandeliers, drinking wine, and dancing to orchestra music, not in a gaudy honky tonk, drinking beer and listening to obscene shouts and the raucous music of a loud five-piece band.

Rufrius was right, they were very pretty in their Greek hoplite armor of linen corselets oversewn with silver metal scales, gaudy purple tunics, high brown boots, silver nose-pieced helmets bearing purple horsehair plumes.

They were both the same, with gaudy red and yellow pictured flames still visible on the singed surfaces, and the words GOLDEN BOMB in jazzy letters on the one under the harrow.

A small man, wearing a stylish but somewhat gaudy Ionian purple snakeskin jacket with illuminated kummerbund and curly-toed Brazilian pigbark slippers, Mini looked exactly what he was: a dealer in wholesale dried fruit.

Even here, no movement of life is visible, but one who has lived and known towns like these feels for the first time an emotion of warmth and life as he looks at the gaudy, blazing bill-beplastered silence of that front.

The gaudy earring no one would lay claim to, the matchbook from Le Mascarade she had found in her car, the necklace that had come in the plain white envelope.

He was attired in a gaudy purple dressing gown that gave him a mildish appearance.

A gaudy oleograph of a soldier on horseback--which little Peter had been fond of, and which had been hung up to amuse him during one of those childish illnesses--remained in its place.