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Garish   Listen
adjective
Garish  adj.  
1.
Showy; dazzling; ostentatious; attracting or exciting attention. "The garish sun." "A garish flag." "In... garish colors." "The garish day." "Garish like the laughters of drunkenness."
2.
Gay to extravagance; flighty. "It makes the mind loose and garish."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Garish" Quotes from Famous Books



... which may be called old ivory. It is not garish, as a dead white would be, especially in the strong California sunlight, but soft and restful to the eye. It harmonizes with the other colors selected, and, most important of all, it avoids a certain ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... her back against the post that held the macaroni box, and waited for the stage. Her face did not need the pink light of the parasol, for it was red enough after that broiling walk of yesterday. The desert did not look so romantic by the garish light of midday, but she stared out over it and saw, as with eyes newly opened to appreciation, that there was a certain charm even in its garishness. She had lost a good deal of moodiness and a good deal of discontent, somewhere along the moonlight trail of last ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... of the Middle Ages, threatened with starvation while wheat and cattle rotted outside its grasp. But the enemy was within its walls, either rioting up and down the iron roadways, or sipping its cooling draughts and fanning itself with the garish pages of the morning paper at some comfortable club. It was a war of injunctions and court decrees. But the passions were the same as those that set Paris flaming a century before, and it was a war with but one end: the well-fed, well-equipped ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... artillerists who wanted to turn on their own curtains of fire instantly the charge started. Then there were other little flashes and darts of light and flame which insisted on adding their moiety to the garish whole. And under the German trenches at several points were vast charges of explosives which had been patiently borne under ground ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... to life with the dimly remembered echo of a woman's scream still ringing in his ears. For a moment he thought that he was awakening on his cot back in the laboratory after an unusually vivid and weird nightmare. Then the garish green moonlight around him brought swift realization that the incredible happenings of the ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... iron-hearted senseless mass of madness and folly! why did I ever dream that I had the power to arrest thy headlong course, and fix thy bewildered wits, thy garish idiot eye on me? On my weak efforts! my humble wishes! my craving wants! What signs of luxury, what tokens of dissipation, what innumerable marks of extravagant waste did I every where see around me, at the moment that poverty was thus pinching me ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... mistily seen through the smoke of half a hundred cigars and cigarettes, the Loves and Shepherdesses of the garish walls, the diners starting up in their places, all suddenly seemed to swing round in a great half-circle before Romarin's eyes. The next moment, feeling as if he stood on something on which he found it difficult to keep his balance, he had caught up the table-knife with which ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... disarray of little shrivelled lemons, with stalks in many cases, for they have been gathered hard by. In the centre of the market-place are all the meat and fish shops, and there one may see huge sturgeon and salmon brought from the fisheries of the Caspian. Garish notices inform in five languages that fresh caviare is received each day. Round about the butchers are ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... the best of wives; Let not thy garish wing Come fluttering our Autumn lives With truant dreams of Spring! Away! Re-seek thy "Flowery Land;" Be Buddha's law obeyed; Lest Betty's undiscerning hand Should slay ... a ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... express is gliding into Cirencester, the ancient capital of the Cotswold country. How fair the old place seems after the dirt and smoke of London! Here town and country are blended into one, and everything is clean and fresh and picturesque. The garish church, as you view it from the top of the market-place, has a charm unsurpassed by any other sacred building in the land. In what that charm lies I have often wondered. Is it the marvellous symmetry of the whole graceful pile, as the eye, glancing down the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... Cliff for the summer, dear?" she asked Blue Bonnet one afternoon. It was Friday, and Blue Bonnet was spending the week-end with her family; Uncle Cliff was still in Boston. Aunt Lucinda had taken out her sewing and there was a very homey atmosphere—even in the garish hotel room—conducive ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs

... moon is up, is the time to visit this spot. Standing here, with the looming pile of the Doge's Palace bulked behind you, and the gorgeous but somewhat garish decorations of the great cathedral softened and soothed into perfection of outline and coloring by the half light, you can for the moment forget the fallen state of Venice, and your imagination peoples the splendid plaza for you with the ghosts of its dead and vanished greatnesses. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... brightness of that future day dimmed all earth's garish glories into darkness. It was because Paul saw the Beyond flaming with such lustre that the nearer distance to him seemed to have sunk into gloom. Just as a man or other object between you and the western sky when the sun is there will be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... last Reading at this place, I and Charles Kent were the two—the only two—favoured with a place on the platform, behind the screens. From that coign, I heard him say his last farewell words: "Vanish from these garish lights for evermore!" ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald

... convoying a brace of panthers, pacing as sedately as the brace of lions in the morning procession, drawing a light chariot in which sat a diademed, robed and garlanded image of Cybele, very gaudy and garish. Behind the chariot paced two priests of Cybele, not Phrygian Eunuchs, but Roman officials, in their pontifical robes, a pair of dignified old senators, ex-consuls both, Vitrasius Pollio and Flavius Aper, full of self-importance. Then came the Chief Priest, tall, full-bearded, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... she looked about her for a purpose, some ideal. But the old beliefs seemed dim; the new ones, garish and confused. She recalled those faces of Amy's friends. "Yes, cheap and tough, for all their clothes!" Or was it just this ghastly time that had made ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole

... "She's going to tell him, in the garish daylight, at the Gent's Furnishing counter. If she can! But she's left me with ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... ever thus, nor prayed that thou Shouldst lead me on; I loved to choose and see my path, but now Lead thou me on; I loved the garish day, and spite of fears, Pride ruled my will. Remember ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz

... frameless crayon, thrust aside and somewhat overshadowed by a huge and garish thing in gaudy-flowered gilt, which easily caught and held the eye of ...
— The Story of a Picture • Douglass Sherley

... apparent that escapes the casual observer. But you can understand that the taste displayed in the wall decoration, shows a refined and cultured nature. A woman of the adventuress type would prefer more garish display. Of course, I am generalizing, but there is much to bear me out. Then, I see, by certain tiny marks and cracks, that these walls have lately been done over, and that they were also redecorated another time not long before. This ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells

... Night, the Night, the solemn Night, When Earth is bound with her silent zone, And the spangled sky seems a temple wide, Where the star-tribes kneel at the Godhead's throne; O the Night, the Night, the wizard Night, When the garish reign of day is o'er, And the myriad barques of the dream-elves come In a brightsome fleet from Slumber's shore! O the Night for me, When blithe and free, Go the zephyr-hounds on their airy chase; When the moon is high In the dewy ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... are not solicitous of modern improvements, and Mr. Dooley views with distaste the new and garish. But he consented to install a nickel-in-the-slot machine in his tavern last week, and it was standing on a table when Mr. McKenna came in. It was a machine that looked like a house; and, when you put a nickel in at the top of it, either ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... really been a cry? It came back to me with horrible distinctness. It was a real cry, the cry of a man in terror for his life. I stopped short in the road and wiped my damp forehead. What a fool I was! The night was over. Here in the garish day there was surely nothing to fear? Nevertheless, I, who had started out thirsting only to breathe the fresh salt air, now walked along with stealthy nervous footsteps, looking all the time from left to right, starting at the sight of a dark log on the sands, terrified at a broken buoy which ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... As you got older, and felt yourself to be at the centre of your time, and not at a point in its circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized with a sort of shuddering, he perceived. All around you there seemed to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... linger behind? Time hath brought dull customs, that laugh at thy gentle being. Puck is buried in the harebell, he hath left no offspring, and none mourn for his loss; for night, which is the fairy season, is busy and garish as the day. What hearth is desolate after the curfew? What house bathed in stillness at the hour in which thy revels commence? Thine empire among men hath passed from thee, and thy race are vanishing from the crowded soil; for, despite our diviner nature, our ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... front row of tumblers and a basin of white sugar. On the hob, a kettle steamed; on, the hearth, a cat reposed. Facing the fire between the settles, a sofa, a footstool, and a little table formed a centrepiece devoted to Mrs. Boffin. They were garish in taste and color, but were expensive articles of drawing-room furniture that had a very odd look beside the settles and the flaring gaslight pendant from the ceiling. There was a flowery carpet on the floor; but, instead of reaching to the fireside, its glowing vegetation stopped short ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... cup to the lees and thought it good. I shall not be the one to point a finger at you, nor even to think too vivid the scarlet of my toilet set. That flamboyant outside my window, once yours, is as garish, and yet lacks no consonance ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... race, Of different language, form, and face - Avarious race of man; Just then the chiefs their tribes arrayed, And wild and garish semblance made The chequered trews and belted plaid, And varying notes the war-pipes brayed To every varying clan; Wild through their red or sable hair Looked out their eyes with savage stare On Marmion as he passed; Their legs ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... knowingly as he goes, upon the starving stock and drought-smitten wastes of land. Nearer he draws to the gum-tree scrubby horizon, turns the clouds to orange, scarlet, silver flame, gold! Down, down he goes. The gorgeous, garish splendour of sunset pageantry flames out; the long shadows eagerly cover all; the kookaburras laugh their merry mocking good-night; the clouds fade to turquoise, green, and grey; the stars peep shyly out; the soft call of the mopoke arises in ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... depressed from our revels of overnight, while you were wisely sleeping." Kseniya Ippolytovna's voice rose higher. "'We are the heisha-girls of lantern-light,' you remember Annensky? At night we sit in restaurants, drinking wine and listening to garish music. We love—but are childless.... And you? You live a sober, righteous and sensible life, seeking the truth.... Isn't that so?' Truth!" Her cry was malignant ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... still unmarried. She seemed much captivated with little Agnes. No wonder, for, in the simplicity of a pure white dress, and with her fair curls streaming down her cheeks, unadorned save by one little blush rose, she looked like an ethereal spirit dropped into the midst of the garish party. ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne

... the afternoon when I arrived, and raining; and as I walked in great streets, of the very name of which I was quite ignorant—double, treble, and quadruple lines of horse-cars jingling by—hundred-fold wires of telegraph and telephone matting heaven above my head—huge, staring houses, garish and gloomy, flanking me from either hand—the thought of the Rue Racine, ay, and of the cabman's eating-house, brought tears to my eyes. The whole monotonous Babel had grown—or, I should rather say, swelled—with such ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... I care what he thinks." Ray was looking about the garish room—plush chairs, heavy carpets, brocade hangings, shining table-top, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... hills, and noted how quiet everything seemed, their curving outlines gave such a sense of eternal rest. There was a patch of lovely blue sky above him, he noticed where the clouds opened up and a glint of golden glorious sunshine came through; but it looked garish and it closed again and the white clouds trailed away, their lower fringes clinging to the hill tops like veils of gossamer woven by time to deck the bride of Spring. A lark rose at the edge of the crowd of weeping women and children as if unmindful of the tragedy over which it sang ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... had he been thinking about all day? Was that the way a murderer would behave? Was this the way a murderer would live, in these surroundings, with those books about him, with that little billiard-table in the next room? Had those waxen murderers in the garish vault lived ordinary lives as well? Pocket had only thought of them as committing their dreadful deeds, yet now he could only think of Baumgartner as living this ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... flourish of my fortune; I call'd thee then, poor shadow, painted queen; The presentation of but what I was, The flattering index of a direful pageant; One heav'd a-high to be hurl'd down below, A mother only mock'd with two fair babes; A dream of what thou wast; a garish flag, To be the aim of every dangerous shot; A sign of dignity, a breath, a bubble; A queen in jest, only to fill the scene. Where is thy husband now? where be thy brothers? Where be thy two sons? wherein dost thou joy? Who sues, and kneels, and says, "God save the queen?" Where be ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... by their sons. We might imagine that a man would shrink from permanently calling himself Brave John Smith, especially if he has been very brave, but the average Magyar will not feel excessively awkward, since he is not altogether repelled by that which is garish.] ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... of pitchy night, Ne'er dreaming that the chivalrous affray Will e'er be heard of—more than heroes they, And more deserving they their country's praise Than nobler names that wear their country's bays. Duty, which glistens in the garish beam That makes it beautiful—as jewels gleam When sunlight pours upon them—lacks the pow'r, The grandeur, which, in dark and secret hour, Crowns lowly brows with bravery more bright Than fame achieved in Glory's ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... all sorts were beginning to pall now upon the jaded monarch. Court festivities became a hollow mockery, the glitter of the stage had vanished, only to leave its queens all daubed with paint and powder in the garish light of reality, and the broken-hearted Philip, bereft of wife and heir, was induced to marry for a second time, in the hope that another son might come ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... rolling Hereford, white with the blossom of apples. At widely opposite points of the large expanse two great cathedral towers rise sharply, taking the light, from the settled shadow of the circling towns—the light, the ineffable English light! "Out of England," cried Searle, "it's but a garish world!" ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... I were free as are my dreams, Sequestered from the garish crowd To glide by banks of quiet streams Cooled ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... Eighth Avenue not a great distance from Herald Square. He was quite proud of his new quarters. They had many of the unpleasant features of the old ones in Wells Street, but they were less garish in their affront to an aesthetic eye. The incongruous pictures were there and the oddly assorted books, but the new geraniums had a chance for life in the broader windows; the cook stove was in the rear and there was a venerable Chinaman ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... roads; electric light in streets without sewers, and pretentious-looking stucco buildings where solid stone should have been employed. Buenos Ayres, Lima, Santiago, Mexico—all bear witness to this tendency, in more or less degree. And under the garish electric arc at night, or silhouetted against the new white stucco wall of some costly hygienic institution, or art gallery, or Governor's palace, glaring in the bright sun, stands the incongruous figure ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... pistol fell from his grasp; he clasped his hands in agony, and falling before the Buccaneer, upon his knees, uttered a brief prayer, for well he knew that Dalton never recalled a doom, and he felt that all had been discovered! In another instant a flash passed along the ship, and danced in garish light over the quiet sea! The bullet shattered a brain ever ready to plot, but never powerful to execute. With unmoved aspect Dalton replaced the weapon, and planting his foot upon the prostrate dead, drew another from his belt. Springall was still by his side, ready to ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... That engaging naivete and that heroic rudeness which give a charm to the early popular tales and songs of Europe find, of course, no counterpart on our soil. Instead of emerging from the twilight of the past the first American writings were produced under the garish noon of a modern and learned age. Decrepitude rather than youthfulness is the mark of a colonial literature. The poets, in particular, instead of finding a challenge to their imagination in the new life about them, are apt to go on imitating the cast-off literary ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... Street. And whether or no it is a tribute, it is certainly a truth that most people with an artistic turn in Kensington High Street would have been very much shocked, in their sense of propriety, if they had seen the popular shrines of Jerusalem; the sham gold, the garish colours, the fantastic tales and the feverish tumult. But what I want such people to do, and what they never do, is to turn this truth round. I want them to imagine, not a Kensington aesthete walking down David Street ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... It was the early part of June. How fresh and lovely it must be up there in the big mountains with Edith's happy little lads. Here it was raw and garish, weird. Some sparrows began quarreling just outside his window. Roger rose and walked the room. Restlessly he went into the hall. The old house appeared so strange in this light—as though stripped bare—there ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... With the garish flarings of the street lamps, Bob for the first time realized the true meaning of the step he had taken. Heretofore he had always possessed a home to which to go, unpleasant as it was, but now he had no place, and ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster

... rectangular, and around three of the walls were divans strewn with garish cushions, whilst highly colored Eastern rugs were spread about the floor. Four lamps swung on chains, two from either of the beams which traversed the apartment. They were fine examples of native ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... fellow, can you lend me L100?" said Lord L'Estrange, clapping his ci-devant brother-officer on the shoulder, and in a tone of voice that seemed like a boy's, so impudent was it, and devil-me-Garish. "No! Well, that's lucky, for I can lend it to you." Mr. Digby burst ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and Jim was made to the tailor's and each got fitted out in a new suit of the latest model, with fancy and somewhat garish waistcoats. Cigars of the best brand—five boxes of them—and two thousand cigarettes were purchased for the purpose of camaraderie and ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... into bud, And splashes on the floor and on the books Through old, high, rounded windows, dim with age. The noisy city-sounds of modern life Float softened to us across the old graveyard. The room is filled with a warm, mellow light, No garish colours jar on our content, The books upon the shelves are old and worn. 'T was no belated effort nor attempt To keep abreast with old as well as new That placed them here, tricked in a modern guise, Easily got, and held in light esteem. Our fathers' fathers, slowly and carefully Gathered ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... theatre proscenium, stands in the centre, its outside walls completely hidden by rose and jasmine bushes. Inside all is gold moulding, light blue, green, and vermilion. A dome of looking-glass reflects the tesselated floor. Strangely enough, this garish mixture of colour does not offend the eye, toned down as it is by the everlasting twilight shed over the mimic palace and garden by overhanging branches of cypress and yew. An expanse of smooth-shaven lawn, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... staircase adorned with votive tablets and paper roses, is placed a tabernacle surrounded by twinkling tapers and pros- trate worshippers. Even this crepuscular vault, how- ever, fails, I think, to attain solemnity; for the whole place is strangely vulgar and garish. The Catholic church, as churches go to-day, is certainly the most spectacular; but it must feel that it has a great fund of impressiveness to draw upon when it opens such sordid little shops of sanctity as this. It is impos- sible not to be struck with the grotesqueness ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... in air, fair, chair, hair, lair, pair, care, dare, bare, share, bear, fairy, compare, parent, prayer, garish, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... of it all is my own loneliness. Here I sit in a commonplace English bow-window, looking out upon a commonplace English street with its garish 'buses and its lounging policeman, and behind me there hangs a shadow which is out of all keeping with the age and place. In the home of knowledge I am weighed down and tortured by a power of which science ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle

... beams of an October sun shone through the one window of the little rudely furnished room that Leah occupied in the inn. Weary from her long, toilsome journey, she still slept. Though tired nature for a time resisted the intrusion of the garish sunlight, the chirruping of her little child at length aroused Leah to consciousness. The tiny, dimpled hands were tangled in the long black hair that hung about the mother's shoulders in dishevelled grace, and the merry child laughed gleefully as ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott

... and the position of the chair which Mrs. Steel selected. And for these few minutes, after that first frank speech, the greater constraint was on the part of the hostess; then all at once she seemed to throw it off, rising impulsively, as though the great high room, with the Italian tiles and the garish gilt furniture, struck the same chill to her as ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... says that things go more hitchily the first year than ever they do afterwards, and that people love each other better and better just because they've got used to it. Well, our bliss does seem a little crude and garish compared with their happiness; and yet"—she put up both her palms against his, and gave a vehement little push—"there is something agreeable about it, even at this stage of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... limbs naked from thigh to toe, smooth as moulded bronze, and proportioned as if cut by the chisel of Praxiteles. Their bodies above also nude; but here again differing from the red men of the prairies. No daub and disfigurement of chalk, charcoal, vermilion, or other garish pigment; but clear skins showing the lustrous hue of health, of bronze or brown amber tint, adorned only with some stringlets of shell beads, or the seeds of a ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... half a century ago for the last act of 'Il Trovatore.' If neither Mascagni himself nor his imitators have succeeded in equalling it since, it is because they have thought too much of the external devices of abrupt and uncouth change of modes and tonalities, of exotic scales and garish orchestration, and too little of the fundamental element of melody which once was the be-all and end-all of Italian music. Another fountain of gushing melody must be opened before 'Cavalleria rusticana' finds a successor in all things worthy of the succession. Ingenious ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... set an example to Lord John. "'The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,' Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don't lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, ...
— The Outcry • Henry James

... along been splendid—but having added to my experiences of London life one new "wrinkle" at least: I had seen the life of St. Giles's kitchen and Bethnal Green lodging-house a la campagne. What I had already seen under the garish candlelight of the Seven Dials and Commercial Road I saw gilded into picturesqueness by that glorious and never-to-be-forgotten sunrise on Epsom Downs which ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... the official personage whose advice she had sought, she hurried out of the huge, brilliantly lit station, and taking a hansom, was driven, as she requested, to the Midland. Here the rather gloomy aspect of the place oppressed her as much as the garish bustle of Charing Cross had bewildered her,—but she was somewhat relieved when she learned that a train for Hull would start in ten minutes. Hurrying to the ticket-office she found there before her a kindly faced woman with a baby in her arms, who was just taking a third-class ticket to Hull, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... garish light is permitted to lift the veil that so concealed those flames, that the play of the senses was fain to cool and assuage the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... the most beautiful of them all. There were flowers in the room and the perfume of heliotrope and roses filled the air. The piano was open and on it one of the popular songs of the day; a loud, garish thing. Ethel liked what she called "bright music;" on the keys lay a tumbled lace handkerchief, and on the floor, close to the pedal of the instrument, was a man's ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... pride. I thought of those cold scenes of his, with their picturesque peasants and cypresses and olive-trees. They must look queer in their garish frames on the walls of ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... the west the fiery globe of the setting sun dropped lazily down to rest behind the quaint goblin peaks of the Grampians. Its last lingering rays touched their summits with a crimson glow, flooded the valleys with garish light, and even penetrated into the recesses of the nearby woodlands until the whole place seemed to blaze as with the red fire of Hell. It was not a peaceful sunset; it did not even hold the promise of peace. It was alive and active, ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... close, and let me lie, On this old-fashioned sofa, in the dim And purple twilight, shut out from the sky, Which is too garish for my softer whim. And while I, looking inward on my thought, Tell thee what phantoms thicken in its air. Twine thou thy gentle fingers, slumber-fraught, With the loose shreds of my disheveled hair: I shall see inly better if thou keep My outer senses ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... railroad ties and "steel mild round" Sunk in the sands of Irak to the hub, Heaping coarse oaths on Mesopotamy; But rather strewn in gentlemanly ease In some cool serdab or beneath the trees That fringe the river-bank you hug your knees And watch the garish East go chattering by. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various

... quickly in full ascendancy. In May and June the sun shines from eighteen to twenty hours and diffused twilight fills the rest of the day. The rainfall is light, from 10 to 25 in. according to the year or the locality. Dull weather is unknown. All nature responds in rich and rapid growth to the garish light and intense heat of the long, splendid days. But the Alaska summer is the uncertain season at times the nights are cold into July, at times snow falls and there are frosts in mid-August; sometimes rain is heavy, or again there is a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... in front of a smaller room, enclosed by heavy quartz. Inside that room was the great bank of mercury-vapor rectifiers. From them lashed a blue-green glare that splashed against his face and shoulders, painting him in angry, garish color. The glass guarded him from the terrific blast of ultra-violet light that flared from the pool of shimmering molten metal, a terrible emanation that would have flayed a man's skin from his body within ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... huge, garish cafe, with its great arc lamps glowing though night had not yet fallen, and with a noisy orchestra playing selections from the latest crazes of music from the revues in London, I sat with a perfectly open mind. I had been the victim of some extremely clever plot. But of its motive, of ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux

... things hanging on the wall or scattered over the tables and shelves which usually please my fancy and amuse me. But to-day it would seem as if all those objects had suddenly conceived some kind of ill-will against me. They have all become garish, grimacing, menacing. That statuette, modelled after one of the Theological Virtues of Notre- Dame de Brou, always so ingenuously graceful in its natural condition, is now making contortions and putting out its tongue at me. And that beautiful miniature—in ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... I went a round of calls with mother, driving round the country for over twenty miles. It was rather dull in one way and interesting in another, for I do like to see other people's drawing-rooms and how they arrange the things. Some are all new and garish, and look as if they were never used except for an hour or two in the evening, and some are grand and stiff like a hotel, and others are all sweet and chintzy and home-like, with lots of plants and a scent of pot-pourri in china vases. That's the sort of room I like. I mean ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... manhood into the surreptitious shadows of the temperance hotel's back room, and had even cleared the express office of its loungers, and left me alone with darkened windows in the private office, the outer door opened and Captain Jim's friend entered as part of that garish glitter I had shut out. To do the scamp strict justice, however, he was somewhat subdued in his dress and manner, and, possibly through some gentle chastening of epigram and revolver since I had seen ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... I noted when I joined him at the train, was dressed as for the occasion. He wore a round straw hat with a coloured ribbon, and light grey suit, and a necktie with the garish colours of the college itself. Thus dressed, he leaned as lightly as his foot allowed him upon a yellow stick, and dreamed himself ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock

... evening it rose in the hollow glade, Where wild-flowers blushed 'mid silence and shade; Where, hid from the gaze of the garish noon, They were slily wooed by the trembling moon. It rose—for the guardian zephyrs had flown, And left the valley that night alone. No sigh was borne from the leafy hill, No murmur came from ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich

... is sometimes beautiful—old, grey, and sere, but venerable, charming—and little children love her, and younger women bring their troubles—ay, and their joys, reverently to her, feeling a benediction in the touch of the pure, withered hand. While the courtesan—alas! a ridiculous garish absurdity, a grim ghost of past merriment, a horrid relic of forgotten debauches, a painted harridan at whom the boys jeer when she passes down the street. Here is one of God's great judgments and ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... unusual the swelling of his heart! The long three-week ride had ended. The stage had rolled down a main street the like of which Pan had never even imagined. It was crude, rough, garish with lights and stark board fronts of buildings, and a motley jostling crowd of men; women, too, were not wanting in the throngs streaming up and down. Again it was Saturday night. Always it appeared Pan hit town on ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... east. We were stealing into a city asleep. Tall flat houses rose in the chill mist to our left and stared blankly down upon us with close-barred green eyelids. Gas-lamps in swept streets flickered dirty yellow in the garish light. A great purple dome lay ahead, flanked by the ruddy roofs and gables of a long church. My heart leapt for ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... her veil aside in order to enjoy the cool and fragrant air, and as she stopped and regarded me doubtfully where I sat, I saw her beautiful face, undefiled, now, by make-up and unspoiled by the presence of garish Eastern ornaments. Nom d'un nom! but she was truly a lovely woman! My heart went out in sympathy to the poor Grand Duke. Had I received such a mark of favour from her as he had received, and had I then been scorned as now she scorned him, I ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... flat. Once upstairs the basket, scarlet paper, and holly were produced, and Mary with deft fingers went to work to fashion a receptacle worthy of the bounties with which the O'Dowds were to be surprised. At last into this garish hamper were packed the viands and afterward a card bearing holiday greetings was tied to the handle with ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... antechamber to a greater, more enduring, and better world beyond those voices, Mr. Gladstone—at least that is my reading of his character—looks at everything in human existence with the power of self-detachment from its garish moments and its transient interests. Behind this constant warfare, underneath all this public passion and sweeping resolves, there is a nether and unseen world of thought, emotion, hope, and in that world there is ever ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... o'clock. In the barn outside the greater number of the guests had departed. Long since the musicians had disappeared. There only remained the families of the ranch owners involved in the meeting in the harness room. These huddled in isolated groups in corners of the garish, echoing barn, the women in their wraps, the young men with their coat collars turned up against the draughts that once more ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... out into bolder relief, as the late hour brought forth every species of infamy from its den,) but the rays of the gas-lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the dying day, had now at length gained ascendancy, and threw over every thing a fitful and garish lustre. All was dark yet splendid—as that ebony to which has been likened ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... except carriages and horsemen, dashing along to the gardens; and as to the 'Wellington promenade,' it was altogether neglected. Whether it was that the 'naked majesty' of Achilles frightened the people away, or whether the place and its accompaniments were too garish for such weather, we know not, but certainly it seemed to be avoided most cautiously; with the exception of some two or three dozen Sunday-strollers, yawning upon the Anglo-Greco-Pimlico-hightopoltical statue above mentioned. It was curious enough to hear the remarks made ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... then let his eyes wander to a far corner of the room. Humming a careless little tune, he sauntered across to the open liquor shelves, selected a garish green bottle and turned unhurriedly back toward the door. The group of ...
— Gambler's World • John Keith Laumer

... in a garish and tinselled City bar, we raised our glasses and drank to the memory of ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... beneath Dodona's oaks, That, dry and voiceless in the garish noon, When the calm night arose with modest looks, Caught with full wave the sparkle of ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... assumed almost the ethereal softness of clouds. It was a glorious scene that the island presented, slumbering langorously under the brilliant rays of the tropical moon, more enchanting in some respects than when viewed in the garish light of the sun; and so strong was the enticement of its beauty upon me that, but for the dull cramping influence of the doctrines accepted by the settlers upon which to frame the guiding rules of their lives, I could ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... drunk, except on oxygen. Not drunk yet. But thirsty. The street was garish with display of drinkeries. In neon lights a tilted glass dripped beads of color. There was ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen

... not for cure, but for oblivion: "Sold everywhere." A score of palaces flourished within call of each other in that dismal district—garish, rich-looking dens, drawing to the support of their vulgar glory the means, the lives, the eternal destinies of the wrecked masses about them. Veritable wreckers they who construct these haunts, viler than the ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... shed a strong yellow light upon this small band as they advanced slowly through the corridors and salons which led to the chapel, and they threw a garish glare upon the painted walls and ceilings, flashing back from gold-work and from mirror, but leaving long trailing shadows in the corners. The king glanced nervously at these black recesses, and at the portraits of his ancestors ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... a long time, and will, no doubt, hang as much longer; for windfalls, I reckon, are not the order in this island. We are pitched several degrees higher in this country. By contrast, things here are loud, sharp, and garish. Our geography is loud; the manners of the people are loud; our climate is loud, very loud, so dry and sharp, and full of violent changes and contrasts; and our goings-out and comings-in as a nation are anything but silent. Do ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... pine, or monumental oak, Where the rude axe with heaved stroke Was never heard the nymphs to daunt, Or fright them from their hallowed haunt. There, in close covert, by some brook, Where no profaner eye may look, Hide me from day's garish eye, While the bee with honeyed thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring, With such consort as they keep, Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep. And let some strange mysterious dream Wave at his wings, in airy stream Of lively portraiture ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton

... all, since Dickens' day. The Minories, the Mint, Trinity House, the embattled "Tower" itself, with the central greensward enclosed by iron railings, and the great warehouses of St. Katherine's Dock, all remain as they must have been for years. The only new thing which has come into view is the garish and insincere Tower Bridge, undeniably fine as to its general effect when viewed from a distance down-river, with its historic background and the busy activities of the river at its feet. A sentiment which is speedily dispelled when one realizes that it is but a mere granite shell ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... weakly as the old, And each alike unmeet to hold The vantage post of war! And ah! when flower and fruit are o'er, And on life's tree the leaves are sere, Age wendeth propped its journey drear, As forceless as a child, as light And fleeting as a dream of night Lost in the garish day! ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... her garden-room, she examined the mysterious treasures in her left-hand glove. Without the smallest doubt Diva had taken down her curtains (and high time too, for they were sadly shabby), and was cutting the roses out of them. But what on earth was she doing that for? For what garish purpose could she want to use bunches of roses cut ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... now night had fallen—that wondrous velvet night of Arizona, which blots out garish day with a cloak of violet, purple-edged where the hills rise vaguely in the distance, and softens magically all harsh details beneath the starry vault—she slipped out to the summit of the ridge in the big pasture, climbing lightly, with the springy ease born of the vigor her ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... cities I have seene since, the more hir beauty hath power and doth still usurpingly gaine upon my affections. I love that citie for hir own sake, and more in hir only subsisting and owne being, than when it is fall fraught and embellished with forraine pompe and borrowed garish ornaments. I love hir so tenderly that hir spottes, her blemishes and hir warts are deare unto me. I am no perfect French man but by this great citie, great in people, great in regard of the felicitie of hir situation, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... glass had been scrawled with a diamond in staggering letters the name "Marie." It seemed that the succession of dwellers in the furnished room had turned in fury—perhaps tempted beyond forbearance by its garish coldness—and wreaked upon it their passions. The furniture was chipped and bruised; the couch, distorted by bursting springs, seemed a horrible monster that had been slain during the stress of some grotesque convulsion. Some ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... chamber, panelled with dingy oak, into which the morning sun burst joyously, its garish brightness ill assorting with the solemnity and even sadness of the scene, there sat an elderly matron, owner and occupier of the place. The casements were so beset with untrimmed branches and decayed tendrils that her form looked dim and almost ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... church of that early day has been removed and in its place a modern one has been erected, but by some happy inspiration of the builders the new church is devoid of the garish ornamentation that is too often found in churches. Harmonious coloring, artistic beauty, make it a fitting place for a Feast ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... in Lydia's ears, and it was not until some time after, in the garish white brilliance of the car, that she convinced herself that she had heard aright. Even then, though she still saw his face raised to hers, the raindrops glistening on his hair and beard, even though she still ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... detected the nigger in the woodpile, had he not been so anxious to make five-ten in the high-jump. However, willing to jog with these behemoths, with whom even he could keep pace, so as to develop more jumping power, the blithesome youth cast aside his garish bathrobe, pranced about in what he fatuously believed was Ted Meredith's ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... would have used for the purpose in the West supported the low ceiling, and—for there was a fire on the wide hearth—the ruddy gleam of burnished copper utensils pierced the shadows. The room was large, and there was only a single candle upon the table, but he felt that a garish light would somehow be out of harmony with the atmosphere of ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... with all their muddy color and uncertain composition, better—actually better, in the fundamentals that count, than those two glorified forms that ruled the room?—For the first time since the very beginning, he doubted: began to feel a weariness of that garish sea of color, beside which the dull little studies suddenly looked so quietly restful; ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... for those only who seek in cards nothing more than a recreation from the occupations of the day. At the others, gain is the sole object of the player; and many persons sit at the gaming-table the whole night, and, in the depth of winter even, never leave it till the "garish sun" warns them that ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... of men and flaunting women, the crash and rumble and clang of night-traffic, the blatant clamour of the pleasures of night; shuffling, blear-eyed derelicts of passion, creeping beldames, peevish children, youth consuming itself; rags and garish jewels, hunger, greasy content—a confusion of wretchedness, of greed and grim want, of delirious gaiety, of the sins that stalk in darkness.... Through it all she brushed, unconscious—lifted from it by the magic of this love: dwelling ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan

... understand the inborn feminine joy in the feel of fine smooth fabric, nor the blending of delicate colours, the dainty ruffling of lace. To the rich these things come as a matter of course, and the working classes are satisfied with garish imitations; it is the poor gentlewoman with the cultivated taste, the cultivated longing for beauty, to whom temptation comes in its keenest form. It had come to Delphine, and she had succumbed. I devoutly hoped and prayed that the shock of the coming bill ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... and to John Storm's eyes, straight from the poverty of his cell, it seemed garish in the red and gold of its Eastern decorations. Men in the pit seats were smoking pipes and cigarettes, and waiters with trays were hurrying up and down the aisles serving ale and porter, which they set down on ledges like the book-rests in church. In the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... blazed beneath a steady fire; evening after evening they shone like beacons in the red light of the setting sun. Then peak by peak they lost the glow; the soul passed from them, and they stood pale yet weirdly garish against the darkened sky. The stars came out, the moon shone, but not a cloud sailed over the untroubled heavens. Thus day after day for several weeks there was no change, till I was seized with an overpowering horror of unbroken ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... thinking, on and on he went, Till he attained the forest's verge, The garish day was well-nigh spent, Birds had already raised its dirge. Oh what a scene! How sweet and calm! It soothed at once his wounded pride, And on his spirit shed a balm ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt

... resting-place - In slow procession sweeping by; I follow at a stranger's space; His kindred they, his sweetheart I. Unchanged my gown of garish dye, Though sable-sad is their attire; But they stand round with griefless eye, Whilst my regret consumes ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... apartments—which looked even more luxuriantly comfortable bathed in the soft radiance that now flooded them from quiet-toned shaded lamps than they did in the more garish light of day—she walked up and down her sitting-room in deep meditation. She was in a quandary—whether or not to risk sending a coded telegram to her paper was the question that presented itself to her. If she were sure that no one else would learn the news, she would prefer to wait ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... ever thus, nor pray'd that thou Should'st lead me on; I lov'd to choose and see my path; but now Lead thou me on. I loved the garish day, and spite of fears Pride ruled my will; ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... observation of the peculiarities of nature. They were all her own, and free from those cunning tints and touches of the drawing-master, by which young ladies' drawings, like their heads, are dressed up for company. There was no garish and vulgar trick of colors, either; all was executed with singular truth ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... the proximity of several newly erected villas and lodging-houses, it ought here to be stated to the visitor, that the true character of the place is in consequence greatly injured: for the garish and obtrusive habitations of genteel life but ill accord with that solitary and impressive magnificence which constitutes the very interest—the sublimity and peculiarity of a silent and cheerless scene, such as formerly ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon

... not know and she followed Mrs. Schuneman into the living-room. "What a pleasant room," she said, when she crossed the threshold, for the sun streamed in through the windows in a way that made even a rather garish decoration seem attractive. ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... house which Byng had built for himself with some trepidation; for though Byng came of people whose names counted for a good deal in the north of England, still, in newly acquired fortunes made suddenly in new lands there was something that coarsened taste—an unmodulated, if not a garish, elegance which "hit you in the eye," as he had put it to himself. He asked himself why Byng had not been content to buy one of the great mansions which could always be had in London for a price, where time ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... return. The house had been thrown open, and supper was being served to whoever cared to stay and partake of it. The murmur of idle purposeless talk drifted out to him; he was irritated and offended by it. There was something garish in this indiscriminate hospitality in the very home of tragedy. As the moments slipped by his sense of displeasure increased, with mankind in general, with himself, and with the judge—principally with the judge—who was ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... occur to him to resist though his eyes seemed to be bulging out of his head and his lungs on the point of bursting. But the reward was near at hand. There, at the bottom of Griffith's Road, they could see it—the Green, unfamiliar with its garish lights and ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... soil from which these people drew their wealth, except for the talk. They had long since risen from the moleskin and top-boot stage in Leaping Horse. The Elysian Fields demanded outward signs of respectability in the habiliments of its customers, and the garish display of the women was there to enforce it. Broadcloth alone was the mode, and conformity with this rule drew forth many delights for ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... putting on white when lilies are in and blue for bluebells, and so on. They like crocus and hyacinth time best of all, as they are partial to a bit of colour, but tulips (except white ones, which are the fairy cradles) they consider garish, and they sometimes put off dressing like tulips for days, so that the beginning of the tulip weeks is almost the best ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... night; come, loving, black-brow'd night, Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine, That all the world shall be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun.—- O, I have bought the mansion of a love, But not possess'd it; and though I am sold, Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day, As is the night before some festival To an impatient child, that hath new robes, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... the box-seat, and, perfect understanding established, drove for a couple of hours up and down, estimating, comparing, and enjoying. There is no city—except Bombay, the queen of all—more beautiful in her garish style than Lucknow, whether you see her from the bridge over the river, or from the top of the Imambara looking down on the gilt umbrellas of the Chutter Munzil, and the trees in which the town is bedded. Kings have adorned her with fantastic buildings, endowed her with charities, crammed ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... drawing-room ornaments by people who never read. It is scarcely necessary to warn the collector against these gaudy baits of unregulated Christmas generosity. All ages have not produced quite such garish livres de luxe as ours. But, on the whole, a book brought out merely for the sake of display, is generally a book ill "got up," and not worth reading. Moreover, it is generally a folio, or quarto, so large ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... sharply, a smart-looking young woman admits them, and Edith goes with him into a splendid and spacious apartment, where three people sit at breakfast. Perhaps it is the garish sunshine, sparkling on so much cut glass and silver, that dazzles Edith's eyes, but for a minute she can see nothing. Then the mist clears away, the trio have risen—a pompous-looking old gentleman in a shining bald ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... voice breaking in upon the waking dream with which he was beguiling the outward misery of the night, it seemed as if one of the characters of his fancy had suddenly become real. He who would have passed Edith in surly unnoting indifference on the open street in the garish light of day, now took the keenest interest in her. He had actually been appealed to, as an ancient knight might have been, by a damsel in distress, and he turned and helped her with a will, which, backed by his powerful strength, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... was a pool Fringed all about with flag-leaves cool And spotted with cow-lilies garish, Of frogs and pouts the ancient parish. Alders the creaking redwings sink on, Tussocks that house blithe Bob o' Lincoln Hedged round the unassailed seclusion, Where muskrats piled their cells Carthusian; And many a moss-embroidered ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... languor and coquetry of her trade were gone. Then she passed him, smiling again, nodding, sweeping a hand and arm effectively through her handsome curls as she flung a shapely limb over the broad back of the bear. In a garish sort of way the woman was beautiful, and this night, as on all others, her beauty had nearly filled the silken coin-bag suspended from her neck. As she rode down the street Aldous recalled Blackton's words: She was a friend of Culver Rann's. He wondered if this fact accounted for ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... what Stopford Brooke has called "the ten fallow years in the life of Tennyson." But fallow years are not all fallow. The dark brooding night is as necessary for our life as the garish day. Great crops of wheat that feed the nations grow only where the winter's snow covers all as with a garment. And ever behind the mystery of sleep, and beneath the silence of the snow, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... perfection, as was the work in lacquer and bronze, wood carving and decorative painting. Every detail is perfect, and the great predominance of red and gold lacquer with its setting of green produced a striking effect, but without being in the least garish. Indeed, the keynote to all the buildings and interiors we have seen in Japan, of any age whatsoever, has been chasteness of design and harmony. If we sometimes find a discordant note in modern Japanese art, I fear Western taste has had some influence, ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... meeting. The Strand, with its unceasing life, came to him as something almost unfamiliar. Since his identification with the new life no business had drawn him east of Charing Cross, and his first sight of the narrower stream of traffic struck him as garish and unpleasant. As the impression came he accelerated his steps, moved by the wish to make regret and retrospection alike impossible by a contact with ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... surpassed in no other part of the world. Even the colors of the Painted Desert in northern Arizona and the wonderful flowers of the California plains are less pleasing. In the Painted Desert the patches of red, yellow, gray-blue, white, pale green, and black have a garish, almost repellent appearance. In California the flame-colored acres of poppies in some places, of white or yellow daisylike flowers in others, or of purple blossoms elsewhere have a softer expression than the bare soil of the desert. ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington

... 8:14—the whole valley is filled by a garish light which resembles the magnesium light used in photography, and I am conscious of a wave of heat. I jump to the window to find out the cause of this remarkable phenomenon, but I see nothing more than that brilliant yellow light. As I make for the door, it ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States

... mediaeval European ideas in the matter of service. If they have any snobbish weakness for display, it is in the number of retainers they can muster. Just as in our country rural prosperity is evinced by the upkeep of fences and buildings, the spic and span new paint, and the garish furnishings, here it is written in the number of servants and hangers-on. The great foreign trading firms like to boast of the tremendous length of their pay rolls. They would rather employ four hundred underworked ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... pilgrimages were, in what adventure it sought itself out. We know precisely wherein it saw reflected its visage, in "water stilled at even," in the angry gleam of sunset on wet leaves, in wild and headlong gipsy rhythms, in moonfire, shimmering stuffs and flashing spray, in the garish lights and odors of the Peninsula, in rain fallen upon flowering parterres, in the melancholy march of clouds, the golden pomp and ritual of the church, the pools and gardens and pavilions reared for its delight by the delicate Chinese soul, in earth's thousand scents and shells and colors. For Debussy ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... served, and always a lively crowd during the luncheon, dinner and after-theatre hours. The room is not large but its dimensions are greatly magnified owing to the covering of mirrors which line the walls. This garish display of mirrors, and elaborate decoration of ceiling and pillars, gives it the appearance of the abode of Saturnalia, but decorum is the ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords

... the claims of rival cities. Cape Town is the mother city of South Africa. Pretoria may boast the memories of the fallen republic, and its old-time position as the capital of an independent state. Bloemfontein has the advantage of a central position, and even garish Johannesburg might claim the privilege of the money power. The present arrangement stands as a temporary compromise to be altered later at the will of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... amusements, no social obligations or entertainments must interfere in the slightest with his earnest work in that plain building of mystery which so calmly, and with such mock modesty, faces the garish home of the Reichstag on the Koenigs-Platz, ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... you are out of these show-streets of Chester, there is a singular lack of charm in the environment. The taint of commerce and the smoke of the north hangs visibly on the horizon. Its immediate surroundings are modern and garish to a degree that by no means assists in the fiction that Chester is the unadulterated old-country town one would like to think it." Such a feeling I could not entirely rid myself of, and even in following the old wall, I could not help noting ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... had a theory that his imagination had been perverted by garish fiction, but the truth was that he scarcely ever read at all. The books at home were not such as would either tempt or corrupt a youthful mind, and as for reading the novels that some of his friends urged upon him—well, he got what he wanted much more quickly from music; any ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... highest expression of sculptural art, combining all the taste of ancient Greece with the grace, the power, the calm, the supreme harmony, and the perfection which genius alone confers, its tranquil and subdued beauty comparing favorably with the theatrical effect and garish splendor of the monuments in St. John Lateran and St. Peter's at Rome. The superb mausoleums of Leopardi and of the Lombardi at Venice are, perhaps, equally beautiful; but I am inclined to give the preference to the work of Bernardo Rossellini. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... The great business places dwindled down into commonplace shops and dwellings, which decreased and became more stunted, even as the folk who filled them did, until he was deep in the evil places of the eastern end. It was a land of huge, dark houses and of garish gin-shops, a land, too, where life moves irregularly and where adventures are to be gained—as the Admiral was to learn ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle

... groups of green foliage plants, and candles, the light of which shone through shades of yellow paper. The prisoners, too, had adorned with varicoloured paperwork the candelabra, girandoles and mirrors which drew twinkles from the long waxed floor, and softened whatever might have been garish in the decorations. Certainly the panels took a new beauty, a luminous delicacy, in their artificial rays; and Dorothea, when, after much greeting and hand-shaking, she joined one of the groups inspecting them, felt a sort of proprietary pleasure ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... 466 Grand Street it stands, far away from Broadway's theatrical district—a low-lying, little Georgian building. It is but three stories high, built of light red brick, and finished with white marble. All around garish millinery shops display their showy goods. Peddlers with pushcarts lit by flickering flames, vie with each other in their array of gaudy neckties and bargain shirtwaists. Blazing electric signs herald the thrills of movie shows. And, salient by the force of extreme contrast, a ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... of sorrow, when these other things come between. The darkness gives birth to the light, and every grief blazes up a witness to a future glory. Each drop that hangs on the wet leaves twinkles into rainbow light that proclaims the sun. The garish splendours of the prosperous day hide the stars, and through the night of our sorrow there shine, thickly sown and steadfast, the constellations of eternal hopes. The darker the midnight, the surer, and perhaps the nearer, the coming of the day. Sorrow has ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... Midshipmen have a means of scenting the whereabouts of a fleet that mere censorship of letters cannot balk. There were at least half a dozen mothers in the foyer of the big, garish hotel on the sea-front. Some were tete-a-tete with their sons in snug, upholstered corners, learning aspects of naval warfare that no historian will ever record. Others presided over heavily laden tea-tables at which their sons and their sons' more intimate friends were dealing with eggs and ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... been out into the world, and was dressed accordingly. A neat dark-blue cloth dress, plainly made, a dull red and blue checked apron; a broad, round hat, shoes and stockings, all in the best and quietest taste—marked contrast to the usual garish Sunday best of the Anglo-Saxon. She herself exemplified the most striking type of beauty to be found in the mixed bloods. Her hair was thick and glossy and black in the mode that throws deep purple shadows under the ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White



Words linked to "Garish" :   flash, tacky, tawdry, brassy, gimcrack, tatty, garishness, flashy



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