Word.ws English Dictionary

gilded the lily

gilded the lily is the simple past and past participle of gild the lily.

Meaning of gild the lily

Verb

gild the lily (third-person singular simple present gilds the lily, present participle gilding the lily, simple past and past participle gilded the lily)

  1. (idiomatic) To embellish or improve something unnecessarily.
  2. To add superfluous attributes to something.
    • Poor Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, so maligned for her imaginative pictures of Lovere and Lake Iseo, may surely be forgiven for having gilded the lily, for adding an extra touch of romance where the romantic already so abounded1908, Edith Wharton, A Motor-Flight through France, Chapter 11

Questions about gilded the lily

What is gilded the lily the simple past and past participle of?
Gilded the lily is the simple past and past participle of gild the lily.

Words near gilded the lily in the dictionary

  1. gilded cage
  2. gilded cages
  3. Gilded Chamber
  4. gilded flicker
  5. gilded flickers
  6. gilded the lily
  7. gilded the pill
  8. gilden
  9. gildens
  10. gilder
  11. Gilderoy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gilded the lily (page history and authors); gild the lily (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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