a. and sb. Also 9 flambeauant. [a. F. flamboyant, pr. pple. of flamboyer, OF. flambeiier, f. flambe FLAME sb.
The OF. word may however descend from the pop. L. *flammidiāre (whence It. flammeggiare) or the recorded late L. flammigāre (Gellius).]
A. adj.
1. Arch. Characterized by waved lines of contrary flexure in flame-like forms (Gwilt): of the style prevalent in France in the 15th and the first half of the 16th c. Also absol. (quasi-sb.).
1832. Rickman, in Archæologia, XXV. 182. I am not certain that we have twenty wheel windows in England, which, for size and tracery, can well be named; while in most of the cathedrals in France there are one, often two, and sometimes three; and they are of all dates, from Early French to the latest Flamboyant, and from their size are often very elaborate; and many of their large windows have wheels of very rich character in their heads.
1836. H. G. Knight, Archit. Tour Normandy, 215. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, a change made its appearance, which has recently acquired the fanciful appellation of Flamboyant, from the supposed resemblance of the upper traceries of the windows to the shape of waving flame—but, after all, the Flamboyant is nothing but the commencement of the Florid, and perhaps, is not distinct enough to deserve an appellation of its own.
1848. Rickman, Archit., 153. A tendency to the Flamboyant style of tracery is frequently observable in the tracery of Decorated windows, in the later period of the style, as in Bolton abbey.
1861. Beresf. Hope, Eng. Cathedr. 19th. C., 31. The exuberant Flamboyant of the continent.
1883. Herbert Rix, Down the Rother, in Good Words, XXIV. 503/1. Etchingham church, with its big, square, central tower and curious flamboyant window.
b. In loose and transferred use; Florid, floridly decorated.
1879. Dowden, Southey, i. 9. Both father and son knew the mystery of that flamboyant penmanship admired by our ancestors, but Southey’s handwriting had not yet advanced from the early rounded to the decorated style.
1883. L. Wingfield, A. Rowe, I. v. 94. On the other side, Wardle and Sir Francis Burdett indulged in flamboyant perorations.
1887. Saintsbury, Hist. Elizab. Lit., ii. 42. Although he [Sidney] seldom or never reaches the beauties of the flamboyant period of prose, which began soon after his death and filled the middle of the seventeenth century, he contains examples of almost all its defects.
2. Of wavy form, suggesting the outline of a flame. Said chiefly of a sword.
1876. Geo. Eliot, Dan. Der., 362. Tall and physically impressive even in his kid and kerseymere, with massive face, flamboyant hair, and gold spectacles.
1878. Browning, La Saisiaz, 602. He there with the brand flamboyant, broad o’er night’s forlorn abyss.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., III. 152. A Siamese grotesque head … [with] flambeauaut ears.
1885. E. Castle, Schools & Masters of Fence (1892), 334. By some writers it [the name Flamberg] is restricted to the flamboyant Spadone or Zweyhänder.
3. Flamingly or gorgeously colored.
1851. Longf., Gold. Leg., III. xli.
| See, too, the Rose, above the western portal | |
| Flamboyant with a thousand gorgeous colours, | |
| The perfect flower of Gothic loveliness! |
1867. D. G. Mitchell, Rural Studies, 3. The tavern-keeper was a deacon—a staid man, of course, who kept an orderly house, and whose daughters, in flamboyant ribbons, were among the belles of the parish.
1888. Punch, 13 Oct., 170/3.
| Oh, the flamboyant flare of those fiendish designs, | |
| With their sanguine paint-splashes and sinister lines! |
B. sb. A name for certain plants with flame-colored flowers.
1879. Isabella Lucy Bird, Sketches in the Malay Peninsula, i., in The Leisure Hour, XXXII. (1883), 20/2. We were soon on a lovely shore under the cathedral-crowned hill, where the velvety turf slopes down to the sea under palms and trees whose trunks are one mass of ferns, brightened by that wonderful flowering tree variously known as the ‘flamboyant’ and ‘the flame of the forest’ (Poinciana Regia).
1885. Lady Brassey, The Trades, 141. At certain periods of the year the madre or immortel is thickly covered with bright scarlet blossoms, which, mingling and contrasting with the violet-red leaves of the young cacao-trees, the scarlet, yellow, green, and crimson pods, hanging from the stem and lower branches of those of more mature growth, and the richly-coloured orange and yellow flowers of the flamboyante (Poinciana produce a wonderful effect.
Hence Flamboyantly, adv.
1894. Speaker, IX. 26 May, 586/2. They are not dead, but here upon this canvas they are radiantly and flamboyantly alive.
