Garish

//ˈɡɛəɹɪʃ// adj

adj ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Overly ostentatious; so colorful as to be in bad taste.

    "The dress fits her well, but the pattern is rather garish."

Adjective
  1. 1
    tastelessly showy wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
showyaffectedbarbaricbedazzlingbedizenedbedizened

Example

More examples

"The film is a simple story cloaked in garish splendour."

Etymology

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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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.