[f. as prec. + -ING2.]
† 1. Of the hair, etc.: Spreading out or waving conspicuously, flaunting. Of a mirror: Giving a bulging or enlarged outline; exaggerating. Obs.
1593. Nashe, Christ’s Teares, Wks. (Grosart), IV. 211. For thy flaring frounzed Periwigs, lowe dangled downe with loue-locks, shalt thou haue thy head side dangled downe with more Snakes than euer it had hayres.
1618. Bolton, Florus (1636), 33. The Fidenates, to scare us, came marching forward, like an host of infernall Furies, with blazing firebrands in their hands, and flaring head-tyres speckled like skins of Serpents.
1635. Quarles, Embl., II. vi. (1718), 85.
| This flaring mirrour represents | |
| No right proportion, view, or feature. |
1641. Milton, Ch. Govt., I. (1851), 23. Her chast and modest vaile surrounded with celestiall beames they overlai’d with wanton tresses, and in a flaring tire bespeckl’d her with all the gaudy allurements of a Whore.
2. Over-conspicuous, glaring, showy, gaudy; † extravagant, irregular. Now used as transf. from 4.
1610. G. Fletcher, Christ’s Vict. on Earth, liv.
| And gage the depth, to search for flaring shells, | |
| In whose bright bosome spumie Bacchus swells. |
a. 1659. Osborn, Characters, &c. (1673), 630. Not to be expected from such a Flaring and intemperate a Course, as that of a Souldier.
1717. Prior, Alma, ii. 518.
| Thou art an aged priest no more, | |
| But a young flaring painted whore. |
1746–7. Mrs. Delany, Lett. to Mrs. Dewes, 446. The bed-chamber backwards, new and clean; crimson and yellow flaring hangings of paper, and a bed of the same materials as the curtains in the dining-room.
1769. Gray, Let. Poems (1775), 365. Not a single red tile, no flaring gentleman’s house, or garden-walls, break in upon the repose of this of this little unsuspected paradise; but all is peace, rusticity, and happy poverty in its neatest most becoming attire.
1810. Hazlitt, Lect. Dram. Lit., 346. The language is a mixture of metaphysical jargon and flaring prose.
1891. E. Peacock, Narcissa Brendon, II. 313. This flaring Anonyma, as he called her.
3. Of a vessel, etc.: That has its sides curving gradually outwards from the base.
1627. Capt. Smith, Seaman’s Gram., xi. 52. If she were laid out aloft, and not Flaring.
c. 1850. Rudim. Navig. (Weale), 118. It is said that a ship has a flaring bow when the topside falls outward from a perpendicular.
1883. W. C. Russell, Sea Queen, III. iii. 57. She was in no sense a good-looking vessel, having what sailors call a flairing bow, which made her appear as round as an apple forward when you viewed her that way, and a very square stern.
4. Burning with a broad irregular flame; shining brightly and fitfully.
1632. Milton, Penseroso, 131.
| And when the Sun begins to fling | |
| His flaring beams, me Goddes bring | |
| To arched walks of twilight groves. |
1633. G. Herbert, Temple, Ch. Windows, iii.
| Speech alone | |
| Doth vanish like a flaring thing, | |
| And in the eare, not conscience ring. |
1661. R. Davenport, City Night-Cap, III. i.
| The fears at lea, | |
| Where I have tug’d with tempests, stood storms at midnight, | |
| Out-star’d the flaring lightning; and the next morning | |
| Chas’d the unruly stubborn Turk with thunder. |
1764. Goldsm., The Traveller, 399.
| Seen all her triumphs but destruction haste, | |
| Like flaring tapers bright’ning as they waste. |
1834. Ht. Martineau, Farrers, i. 18 He put out his flaring candle, and lay thinking poetry instead of reading it, while the gleams on the ceiling, and the drowsy sounds from below, called up visions of his childhood, which at last insensibly mingled with those of sleep.
fig. 1884. D. Pae, Eustace, 67. He stared at the speaker for several moments with a flaring countenance.
Hence Flaringly adv., in a flaring manner; gaudily. In mod. Dicts.
