Word.ws English Dictionary

overflourish

overflourish verb: to make excessive display or flourish of.

Verb

overflourish (third-person singular simple present overflourishes, present participle overflourishing, simple past and past participle overflourished)

  1. (obsolete) To make excessive display or flourish of.
    • Men, like falle Glasses, generally represent their Complexion better than Nature has made it. And as they are likely to overflourish their own Case, ſo their Flattery is hardest to be discover'd .1697, Jeremy Collier, Essays upon Several Moral Subjects
  2. (obsolete) To embellish with outward ornaments or flourishes; to varnish over.
    • the beauteous evil / Are empty trunks o'erflourished by the devilc. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...

Forms of overflourish

third-person singular presentoverflourishes
present participleoverflourishing
past participleoverflourished
pastoverflourished

Origin of overflourish

From over- + flourish.

Questions about overflourish

What does overflourish mean?
Overflourish means to make excessive display or flourish of.
What part of speech is overflourish?
Overflourish is a verb.
What is the past tense of overflourish?
The past tense of overflourish is overflourished.

Words near overflourish in the dictionary

  1. overflorid
  2. overfloridness
  3. overflour
  4. overfloured
  5. overflouring
  6. overflourish
  7. overflourished
  8. overflourishes
  9. overflourishing
  10. overflours
  11. overflow

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overflourish (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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