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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

garish.

Overly ostentatious; so colorful as to be in bad taste.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈɡɛəɹɪʃ/Received-Pronunciation/ˈɡɛːɹɪʃ/British, Southern, Standard/ˈɡɛəɹɪʃ/General-American/ˈɡɛɹɪʃ/
  1. Overly ostentatious; so colorful as to be in bad taste.

    The dress fits her well, but the pattern is rather garish.
Where this word comes from

Unknown, possibly from obsolete Middle English gawren (“to stare”) which is of uncertain origin, probably from Old Norse gá (“to watch, heed”) or gaurr (“rough fellow”) (Proto-Indo-European *gʰow-rós, from *gʰew- (“to be angry”)). Compare with English gaw.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.