luxuriant

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin luxuriāns, the present participle of luxuriō (“to grow rank, have to excess”),^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} from luxuria (“excess, rankness”),^[2][8][9] the source of luxury.^[8] Etymonline and Barnhart also allow for Middle French luxuriant, which Barnhart says was used specifically of vegetation.^[8][4] The Latin noun is from luxus (“excess, extravagance”), probably a figurative use of the adjective luxus, dislocated, which is related to luctor (“to wrestle, strain”).^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Producing abundantly, prolific: about 1550, in a translation of Polydore Vergil's English History, in the OED, whose entry is not fully revised.^[2] Barnhart and Merriam-Webster date this sense to about 1540,^[4][5] and Etymonline to the 1530s.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The word applied first to land or anything that yields plentifully, a use now rare.^[2][10] The sense of plants growing thick and profuse, which Barnhart puts first, is recorded only from 1661.^[2][4] Johnson (1755) defined the adjective as "exuberant; superfluously plenteous", and his quotation from Bacon's Essays (1625) applies it to speech.^[11][2] In the OED's record, this use for invention, speech or ornament that is abundant to excess is older than the use for plants.^[2] Short-lived senses "excessively prosperous" (1654–1766) and, of a disease, "abundantly prevalent" (1656) fell away.^[2] In botany, from 1760, it was a technical term.^[2] Since 1671, it has also been used for luxurious, which the OED calls a misuse.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1550 – producing abundantly, prolific.^[2] Barnhart dates this sense to about 1540.^[4]
• 1625 – of invention, speech or ornament: exuberant, profuse, excessive.^[2]
• 1654 – excessively prosperous (obsolete by 1766).^[2]
• 1661 – of plants: growing profusely.^[2][4]
• 1671 – used for luxurious.^[2]
• 1760 – a technical term in botany.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Growing thickly and abundantly; lush: luxuriant ferns along the riverbank; also of hair or a beard, thick and abundant.^[6][5][2]
2. Yielding abundantly; fertile, fruitful.^[6][5][2]
3. Very rich, elaborate or ornate, often to excess: the luxuriant prose of his early novels.^[6][5][2]
4. Luxurious, marked by luxury; the OED calls this a misuse.^[12][13][2]

Word family

• luxuriance
• luxuriantly
• overluxuriant
• unluxuriant

Related words

• luxury
• luxurious
• luxuriate
• reluctance

Usage notes

It is often confused with luxurious: Collins says that luxurious is wrongly used where luxuriant is meant, as of a moustache or a growth of wisteria,^[6] and Dictionary.com lists the pair as commonly confused.^[7] The OED, by contrast, records luxuriant misused for luxurious, since 1671,^[2] and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate and the American Heritage Dictionary simply list it as one meaning.^[12][13]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
7. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
13. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin