a. and sb. Also 7 bizare, bizarr. [mod.Eng. (17th c.), a. F. bizarre ‘odd, fantastic,’ formerly ‘brave, soldierlike’; cf. Sp. and Pg. bizarro ‘handsome, brave,’ It. bizzarro ‘angry, choleric,’ dial. Fr. (Berry) bigearrer to quarrel. Littré suggests that the Spanish word is an adaptation of Basque bizarra beard, in the same manner as hombre de bigote moustached man, is used in Sp. for a ‘man of spirit’; but the history of the sense has not been satisfactorily made out.
1667. Evelyn, Mem. (1857), III. 161. We have hardly any words that do so fully express the French … naivete, ennui, bizarre, concert … emotion, defer, effort … let us therefore (as the Romans did the Greek) make as many of these do homage as are like to prove good citizens.]
1. At variance with recognized ideas of taste, departing from ordinary style or usage; eccentric, extravagant, whimsical, strange, odd, fantastic.
a. 1648. Ld. Herbert, Life (1770), 113. Her Attire seemed as bizare as her Person.
1668. Dryden, Maiden Queen, Pref. The Ornament of Writing, which is greater, more various and bizarre in Poesie than in any other kind.
1757. Hume, Stand. Taste, Ess. (1875), I. 270. Ariosto pleases; but not … by his bizarre mixture of the serious and comic styles.
1825. Scott, Talism. (1863), 42. Such oddity of gestures and manner as befitted their bizarre and fantastic appearance.
1879. Farrar, St. Paul, I. 352. The bizarre superstitions by which he was surrounded.
b. esp. At variance with the standard of ideal beauty or regular form; grotesque, irregular.
1824. Dibdin, Libr. Comp., 577. The bizarre wooden cuts of Caxton.
1851. Ruskin, Stones Ven., I. xi. § 14. If the arch be of any bizarre form, especially ogee.
1861. N. A. Woods, Pr. Wales in Canada, 359. The capitol is a bizarre Græco-American building which runs much to windows.
c. absol. or quasi-sb.
1850. Leitch, trans. Müller’s Anc. Art, § 99. An intentional striving at the bizarre.
1851. R. Wornum, Exhib. a Lesson in Taste, 5/2. In the Renaissance [architecture], we have … a prevalence of the bizarre and a love of profusion of parts.
2. Hort. Applied to variegated species of garden flowers, as tulips and carnations. Often as sb.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., Bizarre, a term used among the florists for a particular kind of carnation, which has its flowers striped or variegated with three or four colours.
1843. Penny Cycl., XXV. 343/2. Bizarre tulips have a yellow ground marked with purple or scarlet of different shades.
1883. Athenæum, 30 June, 825/3. The ‘streaked gillyflower’ is the clove so crossed as to become a ‘bizarre,’
