Word of the Day

turgid \TUR-jid\, adjective:

1. Swollen, bloated, puffed up; as, "a turgid limb."
2. Swelling in style or language; bombastic, pompous; as, "a turgid style of speaking."

The famous Faulkner style was more than many could put up with. Its marathon sentences, its peculiar words used peculiarly, its turgid incoherence and its thick viscosity repelled.
-- Orville Prescott, "A Literary Personality", New York Times, July 7, 1962

Brown's novels are filled with the rigged episodes of melodrama and the turgid prose that passed for elegance among the literary circles in America before Irving and Hawthorne arrived on the scene.
-- "The Battle of the Books", New York Times, July 10, 1988

Many young Libyans prefer to get their news from the Internet rather than the turgid evening news programs filled with slogans and cliches.
-- Amany Radwan, "The Weird, Wired World of Colonel Ghaddafi", Time, February 6, 2001

The arm being bound, and the veins made turgid, and the valves prominent, as before, apply the thumb or finger over a vein in the situation of one of the valves in such a way as to compress it, and prevent any blood from passing upwards from the hand.
-- William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals


Turgid derives from Latin turgidus, from turgere, to swell.