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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Flourish \Flour"ish\, noun; pl. {Flourishes}.
1. A flourishing condition; prosperity; vigor. [Archaic]
The Roman monarchy, in her highest flourish, never had the like. --Howell.
2. Decoration; ornament; beauty.
The flourish of his sober youth Was the pride of naked truth. --Crashaw.
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. A fanciful stroke of the pen or graver; a merely decorative figure.
The neat characters and flourishes of a Bible curiously printed. --Boyle.
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. The waving of a weapon or other thing; a brandishing; as, the flourish of a sword.
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