Definition of "fulsome"
fulsome
adjective
comparative fulsomer, superlative fulsomest
Offensive to good taste, tactless, overzealous, excessive.
Quotations
[T]he Weather exceeding hot, I entreated him to let me bathe in a River that was near. He conſented, and I immediately ſtripped myſelf ſtark naked, and went down ſoftly into the ſtream. It happened that a young Female Yahoo ſtanding behind a Bank, ſaw the whole proceeding, and enflamed by Deſire, as the Nag and I conjectured, came running with all ſpeed, and leaped into the Water within five Yards of the Place where I bathed. [...] She embraced me after a moſt fulſome manner; [...]
1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “The Author Relates Several Particulars of the Yahoos. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume II, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], part IV (A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms), page 276
You will hear the advanced enfans perdus, as the French call them, and so they are indeed, namely, children of the fall, singing unclean and fulsome ballads of sin and harlotrie.
1820 March, [Walter Scott], chapter X, in The Monastery. A Romance. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Co., and John Ballantyne, […]
Excessively flattering (connoting insincerity).
Quotations
And by hideous contrast, a redundant orator was making a speech to another gathering not thirty steps away, in fulsome laudation of "our glorious British liberties!"
1889, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “The Yankee and the King Sold as Slaves”, in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, New York, N.Y.: Charles L. Webster & Company, page 448
City overcame a spirited effort from Cardiff's Championship rivals Bristol City in a keenly contested Carabao Cup semi-final on Tuesday night, with manager Pep Guardiola fulsome in his praise for Lee Johnson's men over two legs.
2018 January 28, Dafydd Pritchard, “Cardiff City 1 – 1 Manchester City”, in BBC Sport