LURID

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does lurid mean? 

• LURID (adjective)
  The adjective LURID has 4 senses:

1. horrible in fierceness or savagery

2. glaringly vivid and graphic; marked by sensationalism

3. shining with an unnatural red glow as of fire seen through smoke

4. ghastly pale

  Familiarity information: LURID used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LURID (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Horrible in fierceness or savagery

Context example:

a lurid life

Similar:

violent (acting with or marked by or resulting from great force or energy or emotional intensity)

Derivation:

luridness (the quality of being ghastly)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Glaringly vivid and graphic; marked by sensationalism

Synonyms:

lurid; shocking

Context example:

lurid details of the accident

Similar:

sensational (causing intense interest, curiosity, or emotion)

Derivation:

luridness (the quality of being ghastly)

luridness (the journalistic use of subject matter that appeals to vulgar tastes)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Shining with an unnatural red glow as of fire seen through smoke

Context example:

lurid flames

Similar:

bright (emitting or reflecting light readily or in large amounts)

Derivation:

luridness (unnatural lack of color in the skin (as from bruising or sickness or emotional distress))

Sense 4

Meaning:

Ghastly pale

Context example:

moonlight gave the statue a lurid luminence

Similar:

colorless; colourless (weak in color; not colorful)

Derivation:

luridness (unnatural lack of color in the skin (as from bruising or sickness or emotional distress))

 Context examples 

At first it was but a lurid spark upon the stone pavement.

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

The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell-fire blazed behind them.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Here and there, some early lamps were seen to twinkle in the distant city; and in the eastern quarter of the sky the lurid light still hovered.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I was aware her lurid visage flamed over mine, and I lost consciousness: for the second time in my life—only the second time—I became insensible from terror.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Courage and resource were penned in by desperation and numbers, while the great yellow sheets of flame threw their lurid glare over the scene of death.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Right here, I think, entered the austere conscience of my Puritan ancestry, impelling me toward lurid deeds and sanctioning even murder as right conduct.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

He did it that night, and he did it well; and since Martin had made the biggest stir, he put it all into his mouth and made him the arch-anarch of the show, transforming his reactionary individualism into the most lurid, red-shirt socialist utterance.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Swarthy boys and dark-eyed Madonnas, staring at you from one corner of the studio, suggested Murillo; oily brown shadows of faces with a lurid streak in the wrong place, meant Rembrandt; buxom ladies and dropiscal infants, Rubens; and Turner appeared in tempests of blue thunder, orange lightning, brown rain, and purple clouds, with a tomato-colored splash in the middle, which might be the sun or a bouy, a sailor's shirt or a king's robe, as the spectator pleased.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths.

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

Yesterday I was almost willing to accept Van Helsing's monstrous ideas; but now they seem to start out lurid before me as outrages on common sense.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)