Pl. fioriture. [It. fioritura, f. fiorire to flower.] A florid ornament or embellishment in music. Usually pl.
1841. Lady Blessington, Idler in France, I. 220–1. The only defect I can discover in her singing is an excess of fiorituri, that sometimes destroys the vraisemblance of the rôle she is enacting, and makes one think more of the wonderful singer than of ‘Desdemona.’
a. 1859. De Quincey, Conversation, Wks. XIV. 155. Like the heavenly wheels of Milton, throwing off fiery flakes and bickering flames, these impromptu torrents of music create rapturous fioriture, beyond all capacity in the artist to register, or afterwards to imitate.
transf. 1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, x. 323. The modern poet [endeavours] … to look through and beyond the objects of the outer world, to use them as the starting-points for his creative fancy, and to embroider their materials with the dazzling fioriture of his invention.
