Wiktionary
n. (context idiomatic English) extravagant or flowery writing, especially in a literary work.
Wikipedia
In literary criticism, purple prose is prose text that is so extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw excessive attention to itself. Purple prose is characterized by the extensive use of adjectives, adverbs, and metaphors. When it is limited to certain passages, they may be termed purple patches or purple passages, standing out from the rest of the work.
Purple prose is criticized for desaturating the meaning in an author's text by overusing melodramatic and fanciful descriptions. As there is no precise rule or absolute definition of what constitutes purple prose, deciding if a text, passage, or complete work has fallen victim is a somewhat subjective decision. According to Paul West's words, "...a certain amount of sass to speak up for prose that's rich, succulent and full of novelty. Purple is [widely seen as] immoral, undemocratic and insincere; at best artsy, at worst the exterminating angel of depravity."
Usage examples of "purple prose".
Lena Rivers was arrested, giving Bruce Simpson the opportunity to titillate Doris Cuber with his purple prose.
It was to be another ten years before I found the Modern Library Giant of _The Wandering Jew_ (no longer in print, alas) and consumed its 1,337 pages of faded purple prose like so many kilograms of popcorn, since when I have remembered its main outlines and best scenes with the seared after-image recall that some few paintings of the same era achieve -- Gericault's _Raft of the Medusa_ or Delacroix's _Liberty Leading the People_, paintings that could be dismissed as cliches if they had not established themselves as archetypes.
If it seems unlikely that even an emotional Victorian can have spoken such purple prose, we can be certain that Brooke at least wrote it, almost word for word.
Purity of expression is valued over clarity, with the result that much Naked Purple prose and speech is almost undecipherable.
She found the barons and earls of Durandel rather wearing, but he might have a point--even ff he was inclined towards purple prose.
Part of the art of swordfighting is to deal with what's actually in front of you, not what might be convenient for your purple prose.
This was one he could pull out all the stops on, use all the purple prose he wanted.
A cosy chat about an eminent predecessor's home and his son couldn't be concluded with Hixon's purple prose about Bradshaw's rotting in hell.
Lemarque's consisted mainly of fluorescently purple prose about the beauties of space with mention of his colleagues kept down to a dismissive minimum.