FLOWERY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does flowery mean? 

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

1. of or relating to or suggestive of flowers

2. marked by elaborate rhetoric and elaborated with decorative details

  Familiarity information: FLOWERY used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FLOWERY (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Of or relating to or suggestive of flowers

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Context example:

flowery wine

Pertainym:

flower (a plant cultivated for its blooms or blossoms)

Derivation:

flower (a plant cultivated for its blooms or blossoms)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Marked by elaborate rhetoric and elaborated with decorative details

Synonyms:

flowery; ornate

Context example:

ornate rhetoric taught out of the rule of Plato

Similar:

rhetorical (given to rhetoric, emphasizing style at the expense of thought)

 Context examples 

Two columns were occupied with a highly sensational and flowery rendering of the whole incident.

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

Sometimes, indeed, I dreamt that I wandered in flowery meadows and pleasant vales with the friends of my youth, but I awoke and found myself in a dungeon.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

By this time the whole anchorage had fallen into shadow—the last rays, I remember, falling through a glade of the wood and shining bright as jewels on the flowery mantle of the wreck.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

She was sitting just inside the conservatory, waiting for her partner to bring her an ice, when she heard a voice ask on the other side of the flowery wall...

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I was quite abashed by the man’s flowery way of talking—so unlike anything which I had ever heard.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

From a flowery arch at the bottom of my garden I gazed over the sea—bluer than the sky: the old world was beyond; clear prospects opened thus:—'Go,' said Hope, 'and live again in Europe: there it is not known what a sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to you.'

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

What happiness (I thought) if we were married, and were going away anywhere to live among the trees and in the fields, never growing older, never growing wiser, children ever, rambling hand in hand through sunshine and among flowery meadows, laying down our heads on moss at night, in a sweet sleep of purity and peace, and buried by the birds when we were dead!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

And now vegetation matured with vigour; Lowood shook loose its tresses; it became all green, all flowery; its great elm, ash, and oak skeletons were restored to majestic life; woodland plants sprang up profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled its hollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its wild primrose plants: I have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

So the young pair shook hands upon it, and then paced happily on again, feeling that their pleasant home was more homelike because they hoped to brighten other homes, believing that their own feet would walk more uprightly along the flowery path before them, if they smoothed rough ways for other feet, and feeling that their hearts were more closely knit together by a love which could tenderly remember those less blest than they.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden in my brain; but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a rough tract to travel, and around me gather black tempests to encounter.' You ran downstairs and demanded of Mrs. Fairfax some occupation: the weekly house accounts to make up, or something of that sort, I think it was. I was vexed with you for getting out of my sight.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)