Embellishment
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 An act of embellishing. countable, uncountable
- 2 the act of adding extraneous decorations to something wordnet
- 3 An added touch; an ornamental addition; a flourish. countable, uncountable
"Reflection had given calmness to her judgment, and sobered her own opinion of Willoughby's deserts; — she wished, therefore, to declare only the simple truth, and lay open such facts as were really due to his character, without any embellishment of tenderness to lead the fancy astray."
- 4 a superfluous ornament wordnet
- 5 elaboration of an interpretation by the use of decorative (sometimes fictitious) detail wordnet
Example
More examples"Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it."
Etymology
From embellish + -ment.
More for "embellishment"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.