Flourish

Flourish - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

FLOURISH, v.i. flur'ish. [L. floresco, from floreo. The primary sense is to open, expand, enlarge, or to shoot out, as in glory, L. ploro.]

1. To thrive; to grow luxuriantly; to increase and enlarge, as a healthy growing plant. The beech and the maple flourish best in a deep, rich and moist loam.

2. To be prosperous; to increase in wealth or honor.

Bad men as frequently prosper and flourish, and that by the means of their wickedness.

When all the workers of iniquity do flourish. Psa 92.

3. To grow in grace and in good works; to abound in the consolations of religion.

The righteous shall flourish like the palmtree. Psa 92.

4. To be in a prosperous state; to grow or be augmented. We say agriculture flourishes, commerce flourishes, manufactures flourish.

5. To use florid language; to make a display of figures and lofty expressions; to be copious and flowery.

They dilate and flourish long on little incidents.

6. To make bold strokes in writing; to make large and irregular lines; as, to flourish with the pen.

7. To move or play in bold and irregular figures.

Impetuous spread the stream, and smoking, flourished o're his head.

8. In music, to play with bold and irregular notes, or without settled form; as, to flourish on an organ or violin.

9. To boast; to vaunt; to brag.

FLOURISH, v.t. flur'ish.

1. To adorn with flowers or beautiful figures, either natural or artificial; to ornament with any thing showy.

2. To spread out; to enlarge into figures.

3. To move in bold or irregular figures; to move in circles or vibrations by way of show or triumph; to brandish; as, to flourish a sword.

4. To embellish with the flowers of diction; to adorn with rhetorical figures; to grace with ostentatious eloquence; to set off with a parade of words.

5. To adorn; to embellish.

6. To mark with a flourish or irregular stroke.

The day book and inventory book shall be flourished.

FLOURISH, n. flur'ish.

1. Beauty; showy splendor.

The flourish of his sober youth.

2. Ostentatious embellishment; ambitious copiousness or amplification; parade of words and figures; show; as a flourish of rhetoric; a flourish of wit.

He lards with flourishes his long harangue.

3. Figures formed by bold, irregular lines, or fanciful strokes of the pen or graver; as the flourishes about a great letter.

4. A brandishing; the waving of a weapon or other thing; as the flourish of a sword.

flur'-ish (parach, tsuts; anathallo):

The translation of parach, "to break forth" (Ps 72:7; 92:12,13; Pr 14:11; Isa 66:14; So 6:11; 7:12; the Revised Version (British and American) "budded"); of tsuts "to bloom" (Ps 72:16, 90:6; 92:7; 103:15; 132:18); ra`anan, "green," "fresh," is translated "flourishing" in Ps 92:14, the Revised Version (British and American) "green," and ra`anan, Aramaic in Da 4:4; nubh, "to sprout" (Zec 9:17, the King James Version "cheerful").

In an interesting passage (Ec 12:5 the King James Version), the Hiphil future of na'ats, meaning properly "to pierce or strike," hence, to slight or reject, is translated "flourish"; it is said of the old man "The almond tree shall flourish," the Revised Version (British and American) "blossom" (so Ewald, Delitzsch, etc.); na'ats has nowhere else this meaning; it is frequently rendered "contemn;" "despise," etc. Other renderings are, "shall cause loathing" (Gesenius, Knobel, etc.), "shall be despised," i.e. the hoary head; "The almond tree shall shake off its flowers," the silvery hairs falling like the fading white flowers of the almond tree; by others it is taken to indicate "sleeplessness," the name of the almond tree (shaqedh) meaning the watcher or early riser (compare Jer 1:11, "a rod of an almond-tree," literally, "a wakeful (or early) tree"), the almond being the first of the trees to wake from the sleep of winter.

See ALMOND.

"Flourish" appears once only in the New Testament, in the King James Version, as translation of anathallo, "to put forth anew," or "to make put forth anew" (Php 4:10): "Your care for me hath flourished again," the Revised Version (British and American) "Ye have revived your thought for me."

W. L. Walker