flourishing

Pluralflourishings

1. 1
   adjective

   Growing well, thriving, and steadily prospering.

   The flourishing port city attracted merchants from across the region.

   Decades of investment produced a flourishing tech sector in the area.

   Similarthriving, prosperous, booming, successful, burgeoning

   Oppositeailing

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of flourish.

   Trade was flourishing along the coast during that century.

   The arts are flourishing under the new funding program.

   Note

   The verb form carries both halves of flourish. Meaning to thrive, it takes no object: trade was flourishing. Meaning to wave something boldly, it needs one: he came in flourishing a letter. When the thriving sense stands before a noun, try adding more. A more flourishing economy marks the adjective, since the participle does not take degrees.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   An act or moment of thriving or coming into full growth.

   The festival marked a flourishing of local craft and trade.

   Critics noted a sudden flourishing of experimental cinema in that era.

   Similarflowering, blossoming, boom, renaissance

   Oppositedecline

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A bold, sweeping movement, often of the hand or a held object.

   The waiter presented the dish with a theatrical flourishing of the silver lid.

   With a single flourishing of the conductor's baton, the orchestra fell silent.

   Similarsweep, wave

   Note

   Here the word names the movement itself, and it can be counted. Jack London's The Sea-Wolf (1904) has Maud helping a drive "with her cries and flourishings of the broken oar." The usual pattern is flourishing of plus the thing swung, such as an oar, a baton or a lid. When that thing is a weapon and the gesture a threat, the word shades into brandishing a blade.

5. 5
   noun

   The period during which a person or movement stood at the height of their influence.

   Most scholars place the poet's flourishing in the mid-fourteenth century.

   The school of philosophy reached its flourishing under his leadership.

   Similarheyday, peak, prime, zenith

   Oppositedecline

6. 6
   noununcountable

   The act of brandishing a weapon by waving it about in the air.

   The knight's flourishing of his blade signaled the start of the duel.

   The flourishing of knives outside the stadium led to six arrests.

   Similarbrandishing, waving

7. 7
   noununcountable

   An act of boasting or bragging.

   Her letter was full of flourishing about her family's wealth and connections.

   Voters soon grew tired of the senator's flourishing about his own record.

   Similarboasting, bragging, crowing, bluster

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