toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

gaudy
in a sentence

show 22 more with this conextual meaning
  • Several gaudily dressed guests seemed to be arriving at once, many of them outfitted as famous rockers.†   (source)
  • Only when Jack himself roused a gaudy bird from a primitive nest of sticks was the silence shattered and echoes set ringing by a harsh cry that seemed to come out of the abyss of ages.   (source)
  • You took some of your garments to make gaudy high places, where you carried on your prostitution. Such things should not happen, nor should they ever occur.   (source)
  • Costly thy habit [clothes] as thy purse can buy,
    But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
    For the apparel oft proclaims the man;   (source)
  • But there were vacant seats here and there, and into one of them she was ushered, between brilliantly dressed women who had gone there to kill time and eat candy and display their gaudy attire.   (source)
  • ...only a few old ladies shook their heads over Ellen's gaudy clothes, while her other relations fell under the charm of her high colour and high spirits.   (source)
  • ...Elizabeth saw, with admiration of his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of splendour, and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings.   (source)
  • The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile.   (source)
  • He found the count standing before some copies of Albano and Fattore that had been passed off to the banker as originals; but which, mere copies as they were, seemed to feel their degradation in being brought into juxtaposition with the gaudy colors that covered the ceiling.   (source)
  • Off he limped--he carried a bullet, he claimed, from San Juan Hill--by the mile-long big meshed fence of the corporation in which such needs as fences were met by sub-officers' inviting contractors' bids and a tight steel net permitted all to look in at the vast remote shimmer, the brick steeples, the long power-buildings and the Vesuvian soft coal under the scarcely smeared summer sky and gaudiness.†   (source)
  • They who have been accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will, no doubt, frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and aukwardness: they will look round for poetry, and will be induced to inquire by what species of courtesy these attempts can be permitted to assume that title.†   (source)
  • Here, these demonstrations seemed a part of the high colour that was in landscape and gardens, in the flaming cactus and the gaudily decorated altars,—in the agonized Christs and dolorous Virgins and the very human figures of the saints.†   (source)
  • Rhett Butler had brought her a yellow shawl from Havana several months before, a shawl gaudily embroidered with birds and flowers in magenta and blue.†   (source)
  • He lived in a world of symbols, large, crude, and gaudily painted, labelled "Father," "Mother," "Home," "Family," "Generosity," "Honor," "Unselfishness," made of sugar and molasses, and gummed glutinously with tear-shaped syrup.†   (source)
  • Cloaks of turkey feathers fluttered from their shoulders; huge feather diadems exploded gaudily round their heads.†   (source)
  • He was a thickly built boy, gaudily dressed; he had a low forehead, black hair, and a kind, stupid, indolent temper.†   (source)
  • He ran into the storeroom and brought out a gaudily painted harmonica, sat down on a bench, and spreading his fat legs apart began to play like a whole band.†   (source)
  • while his house blazed gaudily on.†   (source)
  • Her long coal-black hair was soon adjusted in a simple knot, the calico dress belted tight to her slender waist, and her little feet concealed in their gaudily ornamented moccasins.†   (source)
  • The platform, as well as the caves of the house, were surmounted by gaudily painted railings, and the genius of Hiram was exerted in the fabrication of divers urns and mouldings, that were scattered profusely around this part of their labors.†   (source)
  • Above the chimney were sundry villainous old guns, and a couple of horse-pistols: and, by way of ornament, three gaudily-painted canisters disposed along its ledge.†   (source)
  • Two gaudily painted pullman cars stood on the track.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)
show 10 more examples with any meaning
  • Instead there was the full glare of noon — gaudy, primary, shadowless.†   (source)
  • I learned to recognize the different blooming vines and gaudy roses, to spot the shining dragonflies and coiling snakes.†   (source)
  • Harry, Ginny and Neville and each of the Death Eaters turned in spite of themselves to watch the top of the tank as a brain burst from the green liquid like a leaping fish: for a moment it seemed suspended in midair, then it soared towards Ron, spinning as it came, and what looked like ribbons of moving images flew from it, unravelling like rolls of film'Ha ha ha, Harry, look at it —' said Ron, watching it disgorge its gaudy innards, 'Harry come and touch it; bet it's weird —'†   (source)
  • I faced the gaudy sunflower on her canvas bag—it looked hand-painted—and at last my eyes fell into hers.†   (source)
  • From the opposite side of the pavilion, Clarisse and her buddies ran in with another banner, of identical size, but gaudy red, painted with a bloody spear and a boar's head.†   (source)
  • She goes in the bathroom and dabs some more rouge on her gaudy cheeks.†   (source)
  • Thomas keeps his attention on the rotating commercials (our side currently shows a bright, gaudy Is your child's Trial coming up?†   (source)
  • Those summer nights of 1958 were the first nights I remember feeling "grown up"; we'd drive half an hour from Gravesend for the fleeting privilege of inching along a crowded, gaudy strip of beachfront, looking at girls who rarely looked at us.†   (source)
  • The barrage of gaudy, flickering advertisements for products and places Alyss had never heard of.†   (source)
  • Now I am glad not to be wearing the gaudy, provocative clothing that seems to be drawing stares and whispers to Lil and Em.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)
show 190 more examples with any meaning
  • Emma and I sat down just as the curtain opened, revealing a straw boater hat floating atop a gaudy red-and-white striped suit.†   (source)
  • " 'tis not gaudy, and 'twill keep off the draft there by the chimney."†   (source)
  • Her building has a crumbling stoop, a terra cotta—colored facade with a gaudy green cornice.†   (source)
  • She was wearing Richie's bathrobe —one of those Asian souvenir robes, red satin with a big gaudy tiger.†   (source)
  • She'd worried that the clothing would be gaudy signals to the commandant, but clearly he already knew—as did the guards—where the children hid.†   (source)
  • Above, the setting sun flared gaudy and inhuman, blood-red shelves of cloud that suggested end-times footage of catastrophe and ruin: detonations on Pacific atolls, wildlife running before sheets of flame.†   (source)
  • She is so altered from the woman I knew in the Capitol, stripped of the gaudy clothing, the heavy makeup, the dyes and jewelry and knickknacks she adorned her hair with.†   (source)
  • They'll have left the Anne Frank House behind them, and now the passengers will be aiming their cameras at the giant gaudy crown perched on the spire of the Westerkerk.†   (source)
  • Balanced on top of those, keeping its angle of repose for who knew how many years, was a thick scrapbook with white leather covers, its pages bound with two hanks of gold string that bad been tied along the binding in gaudy bows.†   (source)
  • Gaudy jewels flashed on his fingers.†   (source)
  • The riverbank, though it looks attractive from a distance, is not so lovely once you get there: slick, smelly mud-banks framed by a tangle of bushes with gaudy orange flowers so large that if you tried to put one behind your ear like Dorothy Lamour you'd look like you were wearing a Melmac soup bowl.†   (source)
  • Seizing your assets at Interbank, recovering the gold coins you've got hidden on Homefree, and selling that gaudy farcaster house would about do it.†   (source)
  • Anything approaching a gorgeous, garish or gaudy display of flowers is to be avoided.†   (source)
  • Rainbows are sufficiently uncommon and gaudy that they're pretty hard to miss, and their meaning runs as deep in our culture as anything you care to name.†   (source)
  • The southern California drive-in restaurants of the early 1940s tended to be gaudy and round, topped with pylons, towers, and flashing signs.†   (source)
  • The butler led her to a gaudy, overstuffed parlor and went to alert Mrs. Blanck.†   (source)
  • A carpenter with gaudy nails.†   (source)
  • Dorothea marched into the apartment, her purple tent flying around her like a gaudy flag.†   (source)
  • To the sound of popping champagne corks, tarts with gaudy make-up offered their services to war profiteers seated at laden tables.†   (source)
  • Too gaudy.†   (source)
  • I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies.†   (source)
  • The whole thing looked gaudy and insincere.†   (source)
  • Now that we had spending money, we bought the illustrated paperbacks with their gaudy pictures.†   (source)
  • You're a boy, Sam, a boy dressed up in a gaudy soldier's suit."†   (source)
  • Its gaudy purple neon lights now seem fondly familiar to Mari.†   (source)
  • That settled, they then selected a gaudy array of jackets and slacks regarded as appropriate for what was to be, according to Dick, a Florida honeymoon.†   (source)
  • "And you, Mr. McMurphy," she says, smiling, sweet as sugar, "if you are finished showing off your manly physique and your gaudy underpants, I think you had better go back in the dorm and put on your greens."†   (source)
  • The woman drove them past downtown Atlanta, with its gaudy skyscrapers and gleaming gold-domed capitol building, to their new home, a two-bedroom dwelling in Clarkston's Wyncrest apartments.†   (source)
  • Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.†   (source)
  • There arrived with him a rich group of splendid matrons who were protecting themselves from the burning sun with gaudy parasols, and wore on their shoulders fine silk kerchiefs, with colored creams on their faces and natural flowers in their hair and golden serpents on their arms and diamonds in their teeth.†   (source)
  • "Presents," Edward corrected, and he pulled another key—this one longer and silver with a less gaudy blue bow—from his pocket.†   (source)
  • He surprises himself this way every so often, doing some gaudy thing that whistles up out of unsuspected whim.†   (source)
  • It is still one of the biggest, gaudiest badges in the navy.†   (source)
  • The shirt was a mess of gaudy colors and hectic patterns, way too loud for me.†   (source)
  • Someone switched off the station's generator, and attendants cloaked the gaudy gas pumps beneath modest sheets.†   (source)
  • But a better word to describe the place is gaudy, with plush pink carpeting and silver and gold brocade covering the walls.†   (source)
  • Today I would say it was gaudy and unbefitting a widow, but then a matchmaker is not like a regular woman.†   (source)
  • A starling chattered on a tree, its gaudy purple, red, and yellow feathers out of place in so much sadness.†   (source)
  • A man in a gaudy sports coat jumped up and announced, "Yes, well, Your Honor, my name is D. Jack O'Malley, and I represent Mr. Herschel Hubbard, surviving son of the deceased.†   (source)
  • The Crisis, a vehement new paper, attacked "all the gaudy trappings of royalty" and the villainy of the King.†   (source)
  • I'm not that gaudy.†   (source)
  • I stretch a twelve-by-eight-foot canvas and wash it with an iridescent blue gouache—like the Virgin Mary's robes in gaudy church paintings.†   (source)
  • My grandmother with her charm, gaudy and perishable as dime-store jewelry--whoever had a more exasperating child to contend with?†   (source)
  • Boremund placed his upon a pale blue field, Hotho's was girdled within an embattled border, and the Knight had quartered his with the gaudy peacock of his mother's House.†   (source)
  • She wore a tight, shabby little black dress, which she had tried to camouflage by the gaudy plastic bracelets tinkling on her wrist.†   (source)
  • There are terms like It's my bad, to mean, Oh, I just made a mistake, or more colorful bling bling, to refer to expensive, gaudy jewelry, but can be applied to any other kind of noun.†   (source)
  • I cannot be part of this gaudy convocation of princesses and fairies, jesters and imps, specters and illusions.†   (source)
  • She stooped along, dressed in the gaudy silks and curling headdress of a jester.†   (source)
  • They dragged into the house huge square plastic suitcases on wheels, stuffed full of samples of their wares, knock-off perfumes and colognes, gaudy women's handkerchiefs, plastic AM radios cast in the shapes of footballs and automobiles, leatherette handbags, purses, belts, tinny watches and cuff links, half-crushed boxes of Oriental rice crackers and leathery sheets of dried squid, and bags upon bags of sickly-sweet sucking candy whose transparent wrappers were edible and dissolved on…†   (source)
  • Gaudy and lovable, long-haired, perfumed.†   (source)
  • She was hanging as usual halfway up western sky, in crescent big and gaudy, three-plus days past new.†   (source)
  • A gaudy old creature in a brightly flowered dress, a striped head handkerchief and gold ear-rings.†   (source)
  • Behind and above-a gaudy striped umbrella, on a pole stuck into the deck, tilted so that we do not see behind it-one of those huge six-foot-diameter jobs.†   (source)
  • He squinted at the gaudy dials and gleaming knobs on the dash.†   (source)
  • But somehow those few saved Scurvhamites found themselves looking out into the gaudy clockwork of the doomed with a certain sick and fascinated horror, and this was to prove fatal.†   (source)
  • The other contestants, even the local amateurs, wore gaudy shirts, bright neckerchiefs and fancy-stitched boots.†   (source)
  • Their flat was gaudy and in some ways like themselves.†   (source)
  • He met the bearded man's eyes and, though they were murderous, knew them, and at the same time, without looking away, he saw Luke and Nick and Millie on the couch, white but safe, and a gaudy magician's table, goldfish bowl, something hanging from the far wall, and he understood that the shot was part of a magic trick, though now that understanding did not matter.†   (source)
  • The bells of Moscow's countless churches clanged in the darkness overhead, and the trolleys rang as they scurried through the streets, but Lara was also deafened by the gaudy window displays and glaring lights, as if they too emitted sounds of their own, like the bells and wheels.†   (source)
  • When all was ready we spread the leaves under the gaudy marriage pandal Nathan had borrowed for the occasion and ate and drank for long, merry hours.†   (source)
  • The room is gaudy with gowns, red roses, silver service clinking.†   (source)
  • A woman in gaudy Renaissance Minor garb pointed my way.†   (source)
  • It is sumptuous without being gaudy, extravagant without being hideous.†   (source)
  • He pointed at a tall, gaudy facade at the edge of the square.†   (source)
  • He looked at Marie in the gaudy lights of the newsstand; she was wincing in the sudden downpour.†   (source)
  • It was smaller in size and less gaudy in its decoration.†   (source)
  • A fleet sergeant sat at a desk there, in dress uniform, gaudy as a circus.†   (source)
  • The gaudy mushroom enlarged with incredible speed, angry, poisonous, malignant.†   (source)
  • Struggling to draw breath into lungs that felt flattened, he blinked and realized that the gaudy glare was sunlight streaming through a canopy of leaves far above him.†   (source)
  • Let us be thought over-much plain and simple, even bare, rather than gaudy, flashy, cheap and meretricious.†   (source)
  • Poor Aimee is in Toronto, in the Mount Pleasant Cemetery, alongside the Griffens — with Richard and Winifred and their gaudy polished-granite megalith.†   (source)
  • Yet my presence was known throughout the region: I was a gaudy flag waving overhead during all those months of sickness and oblivion, just a girl in love, the center of my own universe.†   (source)
  • "It seemed to me," he wrote, in a letter to John in Brookline, "that at the least it must have been extremely disquieting, gaudy & childish, if not savage and an injury to the Exposition, through its disturbance of dignity, and injury to breadth, unity & composure."†   (source)
  • The Other's servants oft hide black hearts in gaudy light, so R'hllor gives his priests the power to see through falsehoods."†   (source)
  • Nasuada was waiting for him by a row of three flagpoles, upon which a half-dozen gaudy pennants hung limp in the cooling air.†   (source)
  • Instead of the usual oversized, cheap, gaudy, noise-making, spoiling-your-clothes, wasting-your-mind toys, that duffle bag was lined with school supplies and flashcards and workbooks and puzzle-size boxes whose covers announced: Mastering Arabic Numerals, The Wonders of Nature, A B C of Reading, More Sounds To Say.†   (source)
  • "They might," said Arianne, "but peacocks are vain, proud creatures, strutting about in all those gaudy colors.†   (source)
  • Bourne reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a long, thin brightly covered box with the sort of gaudy wrapping found in souvenir shops the world over.†   (source)
  • Gaudy food.†   (source)
  • The back is a gaudy parade float of lilies and carnations and roses in varying states of bloom and wither.†   (source)
  • She was hot and tired, and the sight of Steve Kemp's battered Ford Econoline van with the gaudy desert murals painted on the sides suddenly turned her furious.†   (source)
  • Both looked back then on the wild revelry, the gaudy wealth, and the unbridled fornication as an annoyance and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to fund the paradise of shared solitude.†   (source)
  • There was no applause, none, and yet thousands of patrons packed the vast and gaudy room-a strange audience, mostly men and mostly Negroes.†   (source)
  • Stay out of the light, the gaudy bombastic lights that belonged more properly to an island carnivale.†   (source)
  • Recognizable to Westerners for his leopard-skin pillbox hat and gaudy large-frame glasses, Mobutu bought villas and yachts in Europe, flew around on the Concorde, and stashed billions of dollars in Swiss banks, including one he bought for himself.†   (source)
  • Mortenson gently nudged other bouquets aside, making room for his gaudy offering, and took a seat against a wall.†   (source)
  • It is as if an initial culture had surrendered to the sweeping incursion of another but refused to yield its first imprimatur, proclaiming the strength of its stone over the gaudy impermanence of coloured tubes of glass.†   (source)
  • The woman in the gaudy mask said, "You think they'll be waiting outside, those creeps, to make me miserable all over again?†   (source)
  • Jason ripped the gun loose, spinning, crouching back into the wall of the small alcove as the Jackal's fusillade blew apart the gaudy paneling of the soft-drink machine and tore into the sheets of heavy plastic that fronted the broken-down ice maker.†   (source)
  • She let people know she was unassailable by wearing powder to cover what beauty may have lain in her face and dressing in gaudy clothes to set her apart from the married women in our county.†   (source)
  • He recognized the winding road to Aberdeen, anticipated the sight of the gaudy floating restaurants and, beyond, the unbelievable congestion of junks and sampans of the boat people, a massive floating community of the perpetually dispossessed; he could even hear the clatter and slaps and shrieks of the mah-jong players, hotly contesting their bets under the dim glow of swaying lanterns at night.†   (source)
  • When he rode the bicycle he would wear acrobat's tights, gaudy socks, and a Sherlock Holmes cap, but when he was on foot he would dress in a spotless natural linen suit, white shoes, a silk bow tie, a straw boater, and he would carry a willow stick in his hand.†   (source)
  • Actually, their tour, of the Fontaine bleau's gaudy premises went unnoticed, amid the men striding about in Bermuda shorts of candy-striped raw silk, and the women wearing bathing suits and mink simultaneously.†   (source)
  • "He left me sitting there, sweating, and came back at least thirty minutes later, carrying a huge gaudy mass of carnations and roses in his arms," Mortenson says.†   (source)
  • To the greater disadvantage of his wife, as she was entering into a sad maturity with her somber long dresses, her oldfashioned medals, and her out-of-place pride, the concubine seemed to be bursting with a second youth, clothed in gaudy dresses of natural silk and with her eyes tiger-striped with a glow of vindication.†   (source)
  • What a sight we must have been: two old sames on their first excursion, trying to walk on remembered feet with only exhilaration to keep them from falling, and an older woman dressed in a gaudy outfit yelling at them, "Stop that bad behavior, or we'll go home right now!†   (source)
  • A mile more: of chastising thorns, burrs and briers that catch at our clothes; of rusty pine needles brilliant with gaudy fungus and molted feathers.†   (source)
  • He has gained his relief, she her payment, he merges carelessly into the human throng, consigning her back into the shadows where she worked or to the gaudy streets where she loitered.†   (source)
  • She laughed, holding the gaudy box in her bigknuckled hands.†   (source)
  • Gaudy blossoms flowered in window-boxes.†   (source)
  • It was rather like the adipose fin of a fish, but gaudy.†   (source)
  • They were gaudy but they were new and fashionable and certainly they caught the eye.†   (source)
  • The horse snorts, then Jewel sees him, glinting for a gaudy instant among the blue shadows.†   (source)
  • He is down there in the barn, sliding fluidly past the gaudy lunging swirl, into the stall with it.†   (source)
  • He has his straw hat with the gaudy band in his hand and wears a Sunday-best blue suit with a high stiff collar.†   (source)
  • An Arab woman--a nurse, I supposed--was sitting beside the bier; she was wearing a blue smock and had a rather gaudy scarf wound round her hair.†   (source)
  • But who could complain of this pert, pretty Paris when it revolved like a merry-go-round--the gold bridge-horses, the Greek Tuileries heroes and stone beauties, the overloaded Opera, the racy show windows and dapper colors, the maypole obelisk, the all-colors ice-cream, the gaudy package of the world.†   (source)
  • The hushed night seemed so real, so lovely that I felt almost ashamed of the gaudy efforts of the faded rockets.†   (source)
  • See," and he went to a kitchen safe, and opened it, to expose a shelf of dishes and pots and another with an array of gaudy angels.†   (source)
  • She hysterically hugged the altar-rails trying to rend from the gaudy statuettes a sign, only a sign, the ghost of a smile, the furtive nod of a waxen head.†   (source)
  • The table is sloppy with remains of breakfast and the debris of the preceding night, and Stanley's gaudy pyjamas lie across the threshold of the bathroom.†   (source)
  • To the right of the theatre, in the window of an ice cream parlor, gaudy, colored popcorn danced and drifted, blown by a fan.†   (source)
  • At length, hungry again for the ships and faces, he left his work and spent his earnings in a week of gaudy riot in Norfolk and on the Virginia beaches.†   (source)
  • The dentist's operating-room looked out on a yard where a few turkeys moved with shabby nervous pomp: a drill which worked with a pedal, a dentist's chair gaudy in bright red plush, a glass cupboard in which instruments were dustily jumbled.†   (source)
  • A gaudy handkerchief with blue, yellow and crimson patterns hung in a riotous blot from his breast-pocket over his neatly belted gray Norfolk jacket, a wide loose collar of silk barred with red and orange stripes flowered across his narrow shoulders.†   (source)
  • She is a blind Mexican woman in a dark shawl, carrying bunches of those gaudy tin flowers that lower-class Mexicans display at funerals and other festive occasions.†   (source)
  • She loved gaudy and expensive jewelry but she had an uneasy feeling that everyone was saying, with perfect truth, that this ring was vulgar.†   (source)
  • Lancelot, who did not care for gaudy things, wore a few heron's hackles bound with silver thread, which suited the argent of his shield.†   (source)
  • It was still early so we decided to leave the Ferris wheel till later and walk by the sideshow tents, looking at the gaudy-colored posters and watching the barkers and the come-on girls first.†   (source)
  • When I was brought back next day, the electric fans were still churning up the heavy air and the jurymen plying their gaudy little fans in a sort of steady rhythm.†   (source)
  • All day her decks had been colorful, a matrix of the vivid costumes of other lands, the speckled green-and-yellow aprons, the flowered kerchief, embroidered homespun, the silver-braided sheepskin vest, the gaudy scarfs, yellow boots, fur caps, caftans, dull gabardines.†   (source)
  • He could face Hiroshima now, because a gaudy phoenix had risen from the ruinous desert of 1945: a remarkably beautiful city of more than a million inhabitants — only one in ten of whom was a hibakusha — with tall modern buildings on broad, tree— lined avenues crowded with Japanese cars, all of which had English lettering on them and appeared to be brand-new; a city of strivers and sybarites, with seven hundred and fifty-three bookstores and two thousand three hundred and fifty-six…†   (source)
  • She is drunk, dressed in her gaudy best, her face plastered with rouge and mascara, her hair a bit disheveled, her hat on anyhow.†   (source)
  • Its head flashes back, tooth-cropped; its eyes roll in the dusk like marbles on a gaudy velvet cloth as he strikes it upon the face with the back of the curry-comb.†   (source)
  • It was a gaudy thing, like a woman with too much rouge on, and the glow it made in the corner of the room was almost warm and tangible enough to touch and the bright, twisting colors added a strange color to the music that came out of the box.†   (source)
  • Branching out from this complete and satisfying centre are all the auxiliary channels of his life, such as his heartiness with men, his appreciation of rough humour, his low of good drink and food and games, his car, his radio, everything that is his, that bears his emblem of the gaudy seed-bearer.†   (source)
  • Many prostitutes had flocked into Atlanta, following the soldiers, but Belle stood out above the rest, due to her flaming hair and the gaudy, overly fashionable dresses she wore.†   (source)
  • I see him dissolve--legs, a rolling eye, a gaudy splotching like cold flames and float upon the dark in fading solution; all one yet neither; all either yet none.†   (source)
  • The shiny carriages of Yankee officers' wives and newly rich Carpetbaggers splashed mud on the dilapidated buggies of the townspeople, and gaudy new homes of wealthy strangers crowded in among the sedate dwellings of older citizens.†   (source)
  • There was one gaudy splash of color among the uniforms that put the girls' bright finery to shame and stood out in the crowd like a tropical bird—a Louisiana Zouave, with baggy blue and white striped pants, cream gaiters and tight little red jacket, a dark, grinning little monkey of a man, with his arm in a black silk sling.†   (source)
  • The old personal charm was still there under this new gaudy manner.†   (source)
  • A long black scarf accentuated her gaudy attire.†   (source)
  • Amory squeezed into the back seat beside a gaudy, vermilion-lipped blonde.†   (source)
  • Her skirt was some gaudy print goods, torn and stained and dusty.†   (source)
  • Long had she lingered round a bird-nest to leave therein the gaudy wing of a butterfly.†   (source)
  • And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances.†   (source)
  • It was here that they made those products with the wonders of which they pestered him so—by placards that defaced the landscape when he traveled, and by staring advertisements in the newspapers and magazines—by silly little jingles that he could not get out of his mind, and gaudy pictures that lurked for him around every street corner.†   (source)
  • As he sat by her bed, his dark face was blank, and the wrinkles which deepened across that mask may have been sorrow, may have been fear…… Nor is it known how, through the secure and uninvaded years, he had regarded his wife's crucifix, which Silva had spied on their bureau—a gaudy plaster crucifix on a box set with gilded shells.†   (source)
  • A few minutes later the little Prince of Wales was garlanded with Tom's fluttering odds and ends, and the little Prince of Pauperdom was tricked out in the gaudy plumage of royalty.†   (source)
  • Joan rode between two lines of horses, burros, oxen, mules, packs and loads and canvas-domed wagons and gaudy vehicles resembling gipsy caravans.†   (source)
  • …precarious, began to let me go, without them, along the 'Meseglise way,' wrapped up in a huge Highland plaid which protected me from the rain, and which I was all the more ready to throw over my shoulders because I felt that the stripes of its gaudy tartan scandalised Francoise, whom it was impossible to convince that the colour of one's clothes had nothing whatever to do with one's mourning for the dead, and to whom the grief which we had shewn on my aunt's death was wholly…†   (source)
  • AND so, of all the influences which might have come to Clyde at this time, either as an aid or an injury to his development, perhaps the most dangerous for him, considering his temperament, was this same Green-Davidson, than which no more materially affected or gaudy a realm could have been found anywhere between the two great American mountain ranges.†   (source)
  • The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one's sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever.†   (source)
  • Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy.†   (source)
  • Yet as he prowled in quest of that call, his senses, stultified only by his desire, would note keenly all that wounded or shamed them; his eyes, a ring of porter froth on a clothless table or a photograph of two soldiers standing to attention or a gaudy playbill; his ears, the drawling jargon of greeting: —Hello, Bertie, any good in your mind?†   (source)
  • Mrs. Hatch swam in a haze of indeterminate enthusiasms, of aspirations culled from the stage, the newspapers, the fashion journals, and a gaudy world of sport still more completely beyond her companion's ken.†   (source)
  • "I've looked everywhere and—I want a little flat, just a bedroom, or perhaps two, and sitting-room and kitchenette and bath, but I want one that really has some charm to it, not these dingy places or these new ones with terrible gaudy chandeliers.†   (source)
  • He thought the tale a 'gaudy lie.'†   (source)
  • Like the flame which welds the loosened particles into a solid mass, his words united those floating wisps of feeling which she had felt, but never believed, concerning her possible ability, and made them into a gaudy shred of hope.†   (source)
  • But New York had so long resigned itself to Medora that only a few old ladies shook their heads over Ellen's gaudy clothes, while her other relations fell under the charm of her high colour and high spirits.†   (source)
  • They were not half a mile away, riding now in wide formation, naked, gaudy, lean, feathered, swift and wild as a gale of wind in the tall prairie grass.†   (source)
  • About half-past eight I passed by an absurd little theatre, with great flaring gas-jets and gaudy play-bills.†   (source)
  • Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him.†   (source)
  • Round and round they spun on the noisy, grinding machine, surveying now a few idle pleasure seekers who were in boats upon the lake, now some who were flying round in the gaudy green and white captive aeroplanes or turning upward and then down in the suspended cages of the Ferris wheel.†   (source)
  • He wished the King would hurry about it—some of the gaudy people near by were becoming pretty offensive.†   (source)
  • It leads you out of the maze into a new gaudy lecture-room where MacCann, with one hand on THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES and the other hand on the new testament, tells you that you admired the great flanks of Venus because you felt that she would bear you burly offspring and admired her great breasts because you felt that she would give good milk to her children and yours.†   (source)
  • There's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we'll smouch it, and carve the things on it, and file out the pens and the saw on it, too.†   (source)
  • He was not even a Catholic, yet that was the only ghost of a code that he had, the gaudy, ritualistic, paradoxical Catholicism whose prophet was Chesterton, whose claqueurs were such reformed rakes of literature as Huysmans and Bourget, whose American sponsor was Ralph Adams Cram, with his adulation of thirteenth-century cathedrals—a Catholicism which Amory found convenient and ready-made, without priest or sacraments or sacrifice.†   (source)
  • He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Narborough, looking at the great ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy curves on the mauve-draped mantel-shelf, exclaimed: "How horrid of Henry Wotton to be so late!†   (source)
  • It should have been buzzing with jovial buyers and sellers, but in all the gaudy booths there were only one Negress with a row of twig besoms, one Hindu in gray rags squatting before his wealth of a dozen vegetables.†   (source)
  • I reckoned the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the audience, but nothing of the sort; pretty soon he crawls out from under the wigwam, and says: "Well, how'd the old thing pan out this time, duke?"†   (source)
  • And as commonplace and noisy and gaudy as it all was, the fact that at last he had her all to himself unseen, and she him, was sufficient to evoke in both a kind of ecstasy which was all out of proportion to the fragile, gimcrack scene.†   (source)
  • Verily, this is no common mind; else, crazed or sane, it could not weave so straight and gaudy a tale as this out of the airy nothings wherewith it hath wrought this curious romaunt.†   (source)
  • As Martin listened to Terry Wickett (rude and slangy as ever, referring to himself as "the boy chemist," speaking of "this gaudy Institute" and "our trusting new lil brother, Arrowsmith") debating with a slight thin-bearded man—Dr. William T. Smith, assistant in bio-chemistry—the possibility of increasing the effects of all enzymes by doses of X-rays, as he heard one associate-member vituperate another for his notions of cell-chemistry and denounce Ehrlich as "the Edison of medical…†   (source)
  • …the worm approached him, of its own accord, he sat as still as a stone, with his hopes rising and falling, by turns, as the creature still came toward him or seemed inclined to go elsewhere; and when at last it considered a painful moment with its curved body in the air and then came decisively down upon Tom's leg and began a journey over him, his whole heart was glad—for that meant that he was going to have a new suit of clothes—without the shadow of a doubt a gaudy piratical uniform.†   (source)
  • I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such, and how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, 'stead of mister; and Jim's eyes bugged out, and he was interested.†   (source)
  • This quaint and gaudy spectacle so wrought upon the rejoicing people, that their acclamations utterly smothered the small voice of the child whose business it was to explain the thing in eulogistic rhymes.†   (source)
  • Walk right in, won't you?" was the affable greeting, and the six, having pushed past her and through the curtains of heavy velvet, which separated this small area from the main chambers, Clyde found himself in a bright and rather gaudy general parlor or reception room, the walls of which were ornamented with gilt-framed pictures of nude or semi-nude girls and some very high pier mirrors.†   (source)
  • It's gaudy, Huck.†   (source)
  • And while Tom, in his high seat, was gazing upon this 'wild' dancing, lost in admiration of the dazzling commingling of kaleidoscopic colours which the whirling turmoil of gaudy figures below him presented, the ragged but real little Prince of Wales was proclaiming his rights and his wrongs, denouncing the impostor, and clamouring for admission at the gates of Guildhall!†   (source)
  • A resistless feeling of depression falls slowly upon us, despite the gaudy sunshine and the green cottonfields.†   (source)
  • "I am to remain on this gaudy platform on which my miserable deception has been so long acted, and it is to fall beneath me when you give the signal?" she said slowly.†   (source)
  • It isn't gaudy, you know."†   (source)
  • CHAPTER VII Knights, with a long retinue of their squires, In gaudy liveries march and quaint attires; One laced the helm, another held the lance, A third the shining buckler did advance.†   (source)
  • The preparations were now complete, and presently a trumpeter in gaudy uniform arose by the editor, ready to blow the signal of commencement promptly at his order.†   (source)
  • They waited here a much longer time than was agreeable to Mr Ralph Nickleby, who eyed the gaudy frippery about him with very little concern, and was at length about to pull the bell, when a gentleman suddenly popped his head into the room, and, seeing somebody there, as suddenly popped it out again.†   (source)
  • Suddenly he recognised her, crushed and ashamed in her humiliation and gaudy finery, meekly awaiting her turn to say good-bye to her dying father.†   (source)
  • A paper fly-cage dangled from the ceiling, to which he occasionally raised his eyes in gloomy thought; and, as the heedless insects hovered round the gaudy net-work, Mr. Bumble would heave a deep sigh, while a more gloomy shadow overspread his countenance.†   (source)
  • He was much over-dressed, in a gaudy vest of many colors, a blue neckerchief, bedropped gayly with yellow spots, and arranged with a flaunting tie, quite in keeping with the general air of the man.†   (source)
  • But, as the female crowd approached them, the gaudy colors of a shawl attracted the eyes of a wild and untutored Huron.†   (source)
  • …day, rode out among heaps of wonders, walked through miles of palaces, and rested in dark corners of great churches; where there were winking lamps of gold and silver among pillars and arches, kneeling figures dotted about at confessionals and on the pavements; where there was the mist and scent of incense; where there were pictures, fantastic images, gaudy altars, great heights and distances, all softly lighted through stained glass, and the massive curtains that hung in the doorways.†   (source)
  • She had caught sight of her new Sunday gown—a cheap curtain-calico thing, a conflagration of gaudy colors and fantastic figures.†   (source)
  • It was a most gaudy and gorgeous crowd, as to costumery, and very characteristic of the country and the time, in the way of high animal spirits, innocent indecencies of language, and happy-hearted indifference to morals.†   (source)
  • They lighted up Rebecca's figure to admiration, as she sat on a sofa covered with a pattern of gaudy flowers.†   (source)
  • "The colour is too gaudy, it looks as though one were trying to be conspicuous," and I did not take the lemon-coloured ones.†   (source)
  • But the sun will permit no white to sparkle; Everywhere form in development moveth; He will brighten the world with the tints he loveth, And, lacking blossoms, blue, yellow, and red, He takes these gaudy people instead.†   (source)
  • In place of the usual deer-skin belt, he wore around his body a tarnished silken sash of the most gaudy colours; the buck-horn haft of his knife was profusely decorated with plates of silver; the marten's fur of his cap was of a fineness and shadowing that a queen might covet; the buttons of his rude and soiled blanket-coat were of the glittering coinage of Mexico; the stock of his rifle was of beautiful mahogany, riveted and banded with the same precious metal, and the trinkets of no…†   (source)
  • Every gaudy colour that fluttered in the air from carriage seat and garish tent top, shone out in its gaudiest hues.†   (source)
  • You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by.†   (source)
  • Still that breathing silence, which marks the drowsy sultriness of an American landscape in July, pervaded the secluded spot, interrupted only by the low voices of the men, the occasional and lazy tap of a woodpecker, the discordant cry of some gaudy jay, or a swelling on the ear, from the dull roar of a distant waterfall.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)
show 1 examples with meaning too rare to warrant focus
  • And, then, there he was, slim and handsome, and dressed the gaudiest and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly hum—and finally skipped off, and made his bow and danced off to the dressing-room, and everybody just a-howling with pleasure and astonishment.   (source)
    gaudiest = tastelessly showy
▲ show less (of above)