1. The quality or condition of being exuberant; abundant productiveness; luxuriance of growth; overflowing fullness (of joy, health, etc.).
1664. Evelyn, Kal. Hort. (1729), 192. Repress the common Exuberance of the leading and middle Shoots.
1695. Woodward, Nat. Hist. Earth, II. (1723), 118. The primitive Exuberance of the Earth was lessen’d.
1823. Scott, Quentin D., ii. A happy exuberance of animal spirits.
1827. Hare, Guesses, Ser. II. (1873), 557. A sweet guileless child, playing in the exuberance of its happiness.
1882. A. W. Ward, Dickens, iii. 58. Nothing is wanting … to attest the exuberance of its author’s genius.
b. Copiousness or redundance of expression.
1717. Garth, trans. Ovid’s Met., Pref. In his similes that exuberance is avoided.
1758. Johnson, Idler, No. 36, ¶ 6. The man of exuberance and copiousness.
1847. Grote, Greece (1862), III. xxix. 69. His exuberance astonishes us.
† c. A fault or error of excess. Obs.
1749. Fielding, Tom Jones, III. v. That the different exuberances of these gentlemen, would correct their different imperfections.
1756. Burke, Vind. Nat. Soc., Wks. I. 30. Allowing me in my exuberance one way, for my deficiencies in the other.
d. An extravagance, excessive outburst.
1841. D’Israeli, Amen. Lit. (1867), 619. His generous impulses burst into the wild exuberances of the reveries of astrology.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), IV. 121. The criticism on his own doctrine … has … been considered … an exuberance of the metaphysical imagination.
2. An overflowing amount or quantity; a superabundance.
1638. W. R[awley], trans. Bacon’s Life & Death, 373. Fatnesse is … an Exuberance of Nourishment, above that which is voyded by Excrement.
1768. W. Gilpin, Ess. Prints (ed. 2), 88. There is an exuberance of fancy in him. Ibid. (1786), Mts. & Lakes Cumbrld., I. 137. An exuberance of water.
1868. E. P. Wright, Ocean World, iii. 65. An exuberance of life of which no other portion of the globe could give us any idea.
† b. ellipt. An abundance of good things, plenty. Obs.
1675. Cocker, Morals, 37. Men promise fair, perform not; in this Sence, Exuberance is turn’d to Indigence.
1751. Johnson, Rambler, No. 105, ¶ 11. Many had great exuberance, and few confessed any want.
† 3. concr. An overflow; a luxuriant outgrowth; an excrescence, protuberance. Obs.
1665. Sir T. Herbert, Trav. (1677), 120. Sulphur, or other like exuberances of Nature.
1687. J. Clayton, Virginia, in Phil. Trans., XLI. 149. Punk … the inward Part of the Excrescence or Exuberance of an Oak.
1781. Johnson, Lett. Mrs. Thrale, 14 April (1788), II. cclxii. 199. Kindness must be commonly the exuberance of content.
1825. Waterton, Wand. S. Amer., I. i. 89. They [the rocks] appear … smooth, and their exuberances rounded off.
