Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One who uses the euphuistic style; one who affects excessive elegance and refinement of language: applied particularly to a class of writers in the age of Queen Elizabeth, at the head of which stood John Lyly.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun One who affects excessive refinement and elegance of language; -- applied esp. to a class of writers, in the age of Elizabeth, whose productions are marked by affected conceits and high-flown diction.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun One who affects excessive
refinement andelegance oflanguage ; applied especially to a class ofwriters , in the age of Elizabeth I, whose productions are marked by affectedconceits and high-flowndiction .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Luke Fox, being ice-bound and in peril, writes, “God thinks upon our imprisonment within a supersedeas;” but he was a good and honourable man as wall as euphuist.
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Here is a specimen of his felicity, referring to the plays of old John Lily, the euphuist.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 Various
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The essential requirement is to remember that Lyly the dramatist is the same man as Lyly the euphuist, and that his audience was always a company of courtiers, with Queen Elizabeth in their midst, infatuated with admiration for the new phraseology and mode of thought known as Euphuism.
The Growth of English Drama Arnold Wynne
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As a modern euphuist has taught us, of all poses the natural pose is the most irritating.
John Lyly John Dover Wilson 1925
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Professor Raleigh's explanation of this tedious moralizing is that Lyly, wit and euphuist, possessed the Nonconformist conscience: "Beneath the courtier's slashed doublet, under his ornate brocade and frills, there stood the Puritan."
John Lyly John Dover Wilson 1925
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Dilettante, aesthete, and euphuist, he would naturally attract the
John Lyly John Dover Wilson 1925
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There is a story that Watson and Nash invited a company together to sup at the Nag's Head in Cheapside, and to discuss the pedantries of Harvey, and our euphuist in all probability made one of the party.
John Lyly John Dover Wilson 1925
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In George Pettie, however, we find a complete euphuist before _Euphues_.
John Lyly John Dover Wilson 1925
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Ghiberti, that euphuist, did not influence those who came after him as
Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa With Sixteen Illustrations In Colour By William Parkinson And Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second Edition Edward Hutton 1922
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Because his phraseology was colorless, he has become a stainer of phrases, a sort of musical euphuist.
Musical Portraits Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers Paul Rosenfeld 1918
qms commented on the word euphuist
To fact he will always hew truest
But flourishes never strew fewest.
Expect, willy-nilly,
That he'll gild the lily.
The man's a committed euphuist.
May 20, 2015