Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use garish in a sentence

14 example sentences · adjective

Garish means overly ostentatious; so colorful as to be in bad taste. Example: “The dress fits her well, but the pattern is rather garish.”

Examples of garish by meaning

adjectiveOverly ostentatious; so colorful as to be in bad taste.

  • The dress fits her well, but the pattern is rather garish.
  • She also said that Thameslink trains were deliberately garish, so as to lure drivers stuck on the M1, which runs alongside the line around Radlett.2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 57

More sentences with garish

  • A blinding light against a garish blue sky made vision difficult, thanks to the previous night's wassail.1980, Ian Chappell, Chappelli has the Last Laugh, page 39. From the entry wassail
  • The Pole sat on the low white wall, scarlet-sweatered against garish bougainvillaea.1970, June Kay, “Timber”, in The Thirteenth Moon, London: Hutchinson & Co, →ISBN, page 52. From the entry bougainvillaea
  • This year's array of post-dubstep sounds are no longer chained to realness but are much more about garish hyper-reality.2010 January 11, Simon Reynolds, “Grime and dubstep – a noise you could believe in”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry post-dubstep
  • It's brazen, proud and 10-carat garish.2025 August 30, Jo Ellison, “Taylor Swift is entering her conservative era”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial…. From the entry maga
  • And behold, I was not in a cellar, but in a bedroom, a great rich garish bedroom, coloured blood red from top to bottom.1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter II, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz…. From the entry electrolier
  • I have been proof against the garish splendors and alcoholic excitements of the ordinary stage combinations of Tappertitian romance with the police intelligence.1903, George Bernard Shaw, “Preface”, in Man and Superman. From the entry Tappertitian
  • Painted in garish colours, they alternately depict scenes from Palestinian life, weddings, Iftar feasts and suchlike, and Surrealist amalgams of martyrs and monsters, including a golemlike figure inscribed ‘Pinochet’.2015 August 26, Joshua Mack, “Sharjah Biennial 12”, in ArtReview, archived from the original on 19 Mar 2024. From the entry golemlike
  • Samantha pressed the garish Valentine’s card to her still flushed cheek one more time, for it had been a particularly long time since she had received the last gift.2004 November, Lesley Zobian, “Chapter 4”, in Valentine's Day, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 45. From the entry Valentine's
  • That theater's a multiscreen movie complex now, but it used to house an in-the-round stage with fat, soft, fall-asleep seats and lots of garish red carpeting.1988 October 7, Anthony Adler, “Some Men Need Help”, in Chicago Reader. From the entry multiscreen
  • Their made-up faces were garish in the night-light and as they walked they stared fixedly ahead, afraid to make a sideways glance in case it should be called soliciting.1980, William Trevor, chapter 4, in Other People's Worlds, Penguin, published 1982, page 79. From the entry nightlight
  • Because it was very quiet and very dark it reminded him more of his beloved African jungle than did the noisy and garish streets surrounding it.1913 June–December, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “What Happened in the Rue Maule”, in The Return of Tarzan, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt…. From the entry berth
  • There were people just about everywhere, packing the garish fluorescent-lit corridors, riding in humming golf carts, escalating up and down escalators, floating along on those George Jetson moving sidewalk thingies.2014, James Patterson, Burn (Michael Bennett), Arrow Books, published 2015, →ISBN, page 32. From the entry escalate

Meaning of garish

  1. adjective Overly ostentatious; so colorful as to be in bad taste.

Full definition of garish

Questions about garish in a sentence

How do you use garish in a sentence?
Garish is used as an adjective. For example: “The dress fits her well, but the pattern is rather garish.”
What is a short sentence with garish?
“It's brazen, proud and 10-carat garish.”
What does garish mean?
Garish means overly ostentatious; so colorful as to be in bad taste.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: garish (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use garish in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/garish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.