Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Excessively ornate or complex in style or language; grandiloquent.
- adjective Swollen or distended, as from a fluid; bloated.
from The Century Dictionary.
- In botany, distended by water or other liquid : said primarily of cells or celluar tissue.
- Swollen; bloated; tumid; distended beyond its natural or usual state by some internal agent or expansive force: often applied to an enlarged part of the body.
- Tumid; pompous; inflated; bombastic: as, a turgid style.
- Synonyms Swollen, puffed up.
- Stilted, grandiloquent. See
turgidness .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Distended beyond the natural state by some internal agent or expansive force; swelled; swollen; bloated; inflated; tumid; -- especially applied to an enlarged part of the body.
- adjective Swelling in style or language; vainly ostentatious; bombastic; pompous.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
Distended beyond the natural state by some internalagent , especiallyfluid , orexpansive force. - adjective of language or style Tediously
pompous orbombastic .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective ostentatiously lofty in style
- adjective abnormally distended especially by fluids or gas
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Writing requires discipline, and it can be taught, but you don't find it in turgid poems about Bad Daddies and The Struggle to Be Me and all the other flat, morbid, narcissistic writing that is encouraged by bad teaching.
Letters 1996
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MATTHEW GOODE has slammed his new movie LEAP YEAR as "turgid" - insisting the AMY ADAMS movie will be labelled "the worst film of 2010."
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February 24th, 2010 more images more imagesMATTHEW GOODE has slammed his new movie LEAP YEAR as "turgid" - insisting the AMY ADAMS movie will be labelled "the worst film of 2010."
Gaea Times (by Simple Thoughts) Breaking News and incisive views 24/7 Bureau News 2010
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As Gunn says in 'Players': Listen, I spent most of this year trapped in what I can only describe as a turgid supernatural soap-opera.
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The intake of air can be minimised by cutting when the transpiration of the plant is low and both stem and bloom are turgid, that is the cells are full of water and stretched to their fullest limit so that stem and bloom are stiff and solid, and by plunging the cut stems straight away into water, preferably warm water as this tends to be taken up more quickly and thus breaks any air lock.
Article Source 2009
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It got trashed, but there are great sequences in there, but the overall effect is kind of turgid in a certain way.
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In Pollack's case, I consider Out of Africa to be Oscar bait, critics bait, the kind of turgid lugubrious epic that comes along every so often and which just isn't really very good.
Sydney Pollack The Brillig Blogger 2008
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Isn't there another grouchy, unproductive and anonymous, online malcontent - one who shares your discomfort for "turgid" things - for for you to play with, say losergrrl, for instance?
"This man is a clear-eyed pragmatist who will get the job done" — says Biden of Obama. Ann Althouse 2008
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But I have come to the conclusion that there is more than one spewer of insulting, yes "turgid" prose, alike as they may be.
"This man is a clear-eyed pragmatist who will get the job done" — says Biden of Obama. Ann Althouse 2008
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In Pollack's case, I consider Out of Africa to be Oscar bait, critics bait, the kind of turgid lugubrious epic that comes along every so often and which just isn't really very good.
Archive 2008-05-01 The Brillig Blogger 2008
brtom commented on the word turgid
"But as before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended ..."
Joyce, Ulysses, 14
January 27, 2007
Prolagus commented on the word turgid
I didn't know any meaning other than Wordnet #3 (abnormally distended) until today: it was the "word of the day" on one of those free newspapers that I found on the table at the test center where I was about to take my GRE test.
And it was one of the words for the verbal section!
November 12, 2008
reesetee commented on the word turgid
Let's hear it for serendipity!
November 12, 2008
bilby commented on the word turgid
*frogapplauds*
November 12, 2008
lweber5@scf.edu commented on the word turgid
Dictionary.com, turgid leeches having had their fill of blood
November 5, 2010
5814738 commented on the word turgid
"The air between them was turgid with contempt and jealousy." From Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake.
February 12, 2011
Silpa commented on the word turgid
The amount of GRE vocabulary he used increased with his years--by the time he was 60, his novels were so turgid that even his diehard fans refused to read them.
October 29, 2017