[f. FLORID a. + -ITY.] = FLORIDNESS.
1713. Steele, Guardian, No. 42, 29 April, ¶ 3. The Merit of his Wit was founded upon the shaking of a fat Paunch, and the tossing up of a Pair of Rosie Jowles. Poor Dick had a Fit of Sickness, which robbed him of his Fat and his Fame at once; and it was a full three Months before he regained his Reputation, which rose in proportion to his Floridity.
1759. Darwin, in Phil. Trans., LI. 527. That these hæmorrhages were from the pulmonary artery, rather than the bronchial, appears from sudden exspuition, the quantity, the floridity, and from the discharge being without pain, and unmixed with phlegm.
1820. Blackw. Mag., VII. 312/2. There is nothing of this flutter and floridity in the poems of Mr Anster, who writes as simply and purely as if he had lived all his life in England, and been educated at an English university.
1831. M. Howitt ed., Seasons, June, 152. We soon perceive the floridity of nature merging into a verdant monotony: we find a silence stealing over the landscape, so lately filled with the voice of every creature’s exultation.
1883. W. D. Howells, A Woman’s Reason, in Century Mag., XXVI. Oct., 917/1. They were both dressed with a certain floridity.
