1. (v. i.) To grow luxuriantly; to increase and enlarge, as a healthy growing plant; a thrive.

2. (v. i.) To be prosperous; to increase in wealth, honor, comfort, happiness, or whatever is desirable; to thrive; to be prominent and influential; specifically, of authors, painters, etc., to be in a state of activity or production.

3. (v. i.) To use florid language; to indulge in rhetorical figures and lofty expressions; to be flowery.

4. (v. i.) To make bold and sweeping, fanciful, or wanton movements, by way of ornament, parade, bravado, etc.; to play with fantastic and irregular motion.

5. (v. i.) To make ornamental strokes with the pen; to write graceful, decorative figures.

6. (v. i.) To execute an irregular or fanciful strain of music, by way of ornament or prelude.

7. (v. i.) To boast; to vaunt; to brag.

8. (v. t.) To adorn with flowers or beautiful figures, either natural or artificial; to ornament with anything showy; to embellish.

9. (v. t.) 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.

10. (v. t.) To move in bold or irregular figures; to swing about in circles or vibrations by way of show or triumph; to brandish.

11. (v. t.) To develop; to make thrive; to expand.

12. (n.) A flourishing condition; prosperity; vigor.

13. (n.) Decoration; ornament; beauty.

14. (n.) Something made or performed in a fanciful, wanton, or vaunting manner, by way of ostentation, to excite admiration, etc.; ostentatious embellishment; ambitious copiousness or amplification; parade of words and figures; show; as, a flourish of rhetoric or of wit.

15. (n.) A fanciful stroke of the pen or graver; a merely decorative figure.

16. (n.) A fantastic or decorative musical passage; a strain of triumph or bravado, not forming part of a regular musical composition; a cal; a fanfare.

17. (n.) The waving of a weapon or other thing; a brandishing; as, the flourish of a sword.