gaudy

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a celebratory reunion feast or entertainment held a college

   Are you coming to the gaudy at eight?

2. 2
   adj

   Very showy or ornamented, now especially when excessive, or in a tasteless or vulgar manner.

   Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, / But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy.

3. 3
   adj

   Fun; merry; festive.

   Let's have one other gaudy night.

4. 4
   noun

   One of the large beads in the rosary at which the paternoster is recited.

   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.

5. 5
   noun

   A reunion held by one of the colleges of the University of Oxford for alumni, normally during the long vacation.

   And since then, Mary had married and scarcely been heard of; except that she had haunted the College with a sick persistence, never missing an Old Students’ Meeting or a Gaudy.

6. 6
   adj

   (used especially of clothes) marked by conspicuous display

7. 7
   adj

   tastelessly showy

Etymology

From Middle English gaudi, from Old French gaudie, from Medieval Latin gaudia. equivalent to gaud (“ornament, trinket”) + -y. Alternatively, from Middle English gaudi, gawdy (“yellowish”), from Old French gaude, galde (“weld (the plant)”), from Frankish *walda, from Proto-Germanic *walþō, *walþijō, akin to Old English *weald, *wielde (>Middle English welde, wolde and Anglo-Latin walda (“alum”)), Middle Low German wolde, Middle Dutch woude. More at English weld. A common claim that the word derives from Antoni Gaudí, designer of Barcelona's Sagrada Família Basilica, is incorrect: the word was i…