Definition of "gaudy"
gaudy1
adjective
comparative gaudier, superlative gaudiest
Very showy or ornamented, now especially when excessive, or in a tasteless or vulgar manner.
Quotations
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, / But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy.
c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene iii]
The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to the fortune of its proprietor; but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of splendour, and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings.
1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], Pride and Prejudice: […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […]
A faded, and an ancient dragon he was; and many a wintry storm of rain, snow, sleet, and hail, had changed his colour from a gaudy blue to a faint lack-lustre shade of gray.
1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, chapter 3, in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, page 19
noun
plural gaudies
(archaic) One of the large beads in the rosary at which the paternoster is recited.
Quotations
In 1458, the owner of the precious book, which had been taken from the martyr’s body at the block, left a rosary of 50 coral beads with gold gaudies, to his “beloved, most blessed Saint Richard Scrope,” to help in his canonization, with a prayer to God that it might be granted of His great grace.
1894, James Hamilton Wylie, History of England under Henry the Fourth, volume 2, pages 356–7