Word.ws English Dictionary

aureate

Syllables: au·re·ate/ˈɔːɹiːət/

aureate adjective: golden in color or shine.

Adjective

aureate (comparative more aureate, superlative most aureate)

  1. Golden in color or shine.
    • O wynd of grace, now blowe into my saile, / O auriat lycour of Clyo, for to wryte / Mi penne enspire of that I wold endyte.14th–15th century, John Lydgate, A Balade in Commendation of Our Lady, lines 12–14
    • And those who husbanded the Golden Grain, / And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain, / Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd, / As, buried once, Men want dug up again.1859, Omar Khayyám, translated by Edward FitzGerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the Astronomer-poet of Persia: Translated into English Verse, London: Bernard Quaritch, →OCLC, quatrain XV
  2. (rhetoric) Of language: characterized by the use of (excessively) ornamental or grandiose terms, often of Latin or French origin.
    • It may, then, be said that aureate terms were those new words, chiefly Romance or Latinical in origin, continually sought, under authority of criticism and the best writers, for a rich and expressive style in English, from about 1350 to about 1530.1919, John Cooper Mendenhall, Aureate Terms: A Study in the Literary Diction of the Fifteenth Century, Lancaster, Pa.: Wickersham Print. Co., →OCLC, page 12
    • In the only monograph on the subject, John Cooper Mendenhall describes aureate terms as "words designed to achieve sententiousness and sonorous ornamentation of style principally through their being new, rare, or uncommon, and approved by the critical opinion of their time." Since the time of...1996, Keith D. White, John Keats and the Loss of Romantic Innocence [Costerus, new series; vol. 107], Amsterdam; Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, →ISBN, page 94
    Synonyms:
    verbose, flowery

aureate meaning in Tamil and Bengali

aureate in Tamil

பொன்னிறம் பூசப்பட்ட, பொன் போன்ற, ஒளிபிறங்கிய, பல சொல்லணி வாய்ந்த

aureate in Bengali

স্বর্ণালঙ্কৃত, অত্যন্ত অলঙ্কৃত

Examples of aureate in a sentence

  • Comp[osition]: Aureate-Bronze Plated Nickel Ruler: Elizabeth II Obv[erse]: Young bust right Obv.2011, George S. Cuhaj, editor, Collecting World Coins: Circulating Issues 1901–Present, 13th edition, Iola, Wis.: Krause Publications...
  • However, readers who found aureate terms pretentious began to call them inkhorn and inkpot terms, both references to the receptacles scholars carried to hold ink.1996, Keith D. White, John Keats and the Loss of Romantic Innocence [Costerus, new series; vol. 107], Amsterdam; Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi...
  • Aureate vocabulary is derived largely from Latin, although some words have a French basis; it was devised as a 'high' or 'elevated' poetic diction used for special ceremonial or religious occasions.2002, Simon Horobin with Jeremy J. Smith, An Introduction to Middle English, Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 73:
  • […] [Stephen] Hawes is the climax of the fifteenth-century kind of aureate diction: after him, nothing was possible but reaction, ridicule, and the creation of a new kind.2015, Northrop Frye, edited by Robert D. Denham, Northrop Frye's Uncollected Prose, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, →ISBN, page 73:

Synonyms of aureate

Forms of aureate

comparativemore aureate
superlativemost aureate

Origin of aureate

Borrowed from Latin aureatus (“adorned or decorated with gold”). Equivalent to Latin aureus (“golden, gilded”) + -ate (adjective-forming suffix).

Words formed from aureate

Questions about aureate

What does aureate mean?
Aureate means golden in color or shine.
What is aureate in Tamil?
Aureate in Tamil is பொன்னிறம் பூசப்பட்ட, பொன் போன்ற, ஒளிபிறங்கிய. See Aureate meaning in Tamil.
How do you use aureate in a sentence?
Comp[osition]: Aureate-Bronze Plated Nickel Ruler: Elizabeth II Obv[erse]: Young bust right Obv.
What part of speech is aureate?
Aureate is an adjective.
How do you pronounce aureate?
Aureate is pronounced /ˈɔːɹiːət/.

Words near aureate in the dictionary

  1. aurated
  2. aurates
  3. auratic
  4. Auray
  5. Aurdal
  6. aureate
  7. aureation
  8. aureations
  9. Auregnais
  10. aurei
  11. aureii

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: aureate (page history and authors); aureate (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); aureate (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-aureate.wav.

Cite this entry: “aureate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/aureate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.