FLORID

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does florid mean? 

• FLORID (adjective)
  The adjective FLORID has 2 senses:

1. elaborately or excessively ornamented

2. inclined to a healthy reddish color often associated with outdoor life

  Familiarity information: FLORID used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FLORID (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Elaborately or excessively ornamented

Synonyms:

aureate; flamboyant; florid

Context example:

the senator's florid speech

Similar:

fancy (not plain; decorative or ornamented)

Derivation:

floridness (extravagant elaborateness)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Inclined to a healthy reddish color often associated with outdoor life

Synonyms:

florid; rubicund; ruddy; sanguine

Context example:

a fresh and sanguine complexion

Similar:

healthy (having or indicating good health in body or mind; free from infirmity or disease)

 Context examples 

I hate a florid complexion and dark eyes in a man.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

So far my friend Macdona; and it may be taken as a fairly accurate, if florid, account of the proceedings.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Their style is clear, masculine, and smooth, but not florid; for they avoid nothing more than multiplying unnecessary words, or using various expressions.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

A heavy step was heard upon the stairs, and an instant later there entered a tall, ruddy, clean-shaven gentleman, whose clear eyes and florid cheeks told of a life led far from the fogs of Baker Street.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The unbroken stillness of the parlour window leading me to infer, after a while, that she was not there, I lifted up my eyes to the window above it, where I saw a florid, pleasant-looking gentleman, with a grey head, who shut up one eye in a grotesque manner, nodded his head at me several times, shook it at me as often, laughed, and went away.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Even on Sunday, when it veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty of passage, the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleased the eye of the passenger.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Mr. Dick, as I have already said, was grey-headed, and florid: I should have said all about him, in saying so, had not his head been curiously bowed—not by age; it reminded me of one of Mr. Creakle's boys' heads after a beating—and his grey eyes prominent and large, with a strange kind of watery brightness in them that made me, in combination with his vacant manner, his submission to my aunt, and his childish delight when she praised him, suspect him of being a little mad; though, if he were mad, how he came to be there puzzled me extremely.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He had the face and beard which I associate with an Assyrian bull; the former florid, the latter so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue, spade-shaped and rippling down over his chest.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

When he was gone I turned immediately to Jordan—constrained to assure her of my surprise. I had expected that Mr. Gatsby would be a florid and corpulent person in his middle years.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby's bedroom, a grey, florid man with a hard empty face—the pioneer debauchee who during one phase of American life brought back to the eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)