Flour·ish n.; pl. Flourishes
 1. A flourishing condition; prosperity; vigor. [Archaic]
    The Roman monarchy, in her highest flourish, never had the like.   --Howell.
 2. Decoration; ornament; beauty.
 The flourish of his sober youth
 Was the pride of naked truth.   --Crashaw.
 3. 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.
    He lards with flourishes his long harangue.   --Dryden.
 4. A fanciful stroke of the pen or graver; a merely decorative figure.
    The neat characters and flourishes of a Bible curiously printed.   --Boyle.
 5. A fantastic or decorative musical passage; a strain of triumph or bravado, not forming part of a regular musical composition; a cal; a fanfare.
    A flourish, trumpets! strike alarum, drums!   --Shak.
 6. The waving of a weapon or other thing; a brandishing; as, the flourish of a sword.

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