FLOURISH (3)

Flour″ish (?), n.; pl. Flourishes (�). 1. 1. A flourishing condition; prosperity; vigor.
The Roman monarchy, in her highest flourish, never had the like. Howell. 2. 2. Decoration; ornament; beauty.
The flourish of his sober youth Was the pride of naked truth. Crashaw. 3. 3. Something made or performed in a fanciful, wanton, or vaunting manner, by way of ostentation, to excite admiration, etc.; ostentatious embellishment; ambitious copiousness or amplification; parade of words and figures; show; as, a flourish of rhetoric or of wit.
He lards with flourishes his long harangue. Dryden. 4. 4. A fanciful stroke of the pen or graver; a merely decorative figure.
The neat characters and flourishes of a Bible curiously printed. Boyle. 5. 5. A fantastic or decorative musical passage; a strain of triumph or bravado, not forming part of a regular musical composition; a cal; a fanfare.
A flourish, trumpets! strike alarum, drums! Shak. 6. 6. The waving of a weapon or other thing; a brandishing; as, the flourish of a sword.