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.