a. [ad. L. lūrid-us pale yellow, wan, ghastly.]
1. Pale and dismal in color; wan and sallow; ghastly of hue. Said e.g., of the sickly pallor of the skin in disease, or of the aspect of things when the sky is overcast.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Lurid, pale, wan, black, and blew.
1658. Phillips, Lurid, pale, wan, of a sallow colour.
1669. Cokaine, Elegy Eliz. Repington, Poems 76. A lurid paleness sits upon the skin That did enclose the beauteous body in.
1746. Collins, Ode to Fear, 20. Whilst Vengeance, in the lurid air, Lifts her red arm, expos’d and bare.
1822–34. Good’s Study Med. (ed. 4), IV. 82. Applied to the disease like our own term green-sickness, from the pale, lurid, and greenish cast of the skin. Ibid., 496. Lurid papulous scall.
1874. Symonds, Sk. Italy & Greece (1898), I. i. 13. A leaden glare … makes the snow and ice more lurid.
2. Shining with a red glow or glare amid darkness (said, e.g., of lightning-flashes across dark clouds, or flame mingled with smoke).
1727. Thomson, Britannia, 79. Fierce o’er their beauty blaz’d the lurid flame.
1805. Wordsw., Waggoner, I. 167. Save that above a single height Is to be seen a lurid light, Above Helm-crag—a streak half dead, A burning of portentous red.
1818. Scott, Hrt. Midl., vii. The lurid light, which had filled the apartment, lowered and died away.
1836. W. Irving, Astoria, I. 263. At night also the lurid reflection of immense fires hung in the sky.
1877. Black, Green Past., xxvii. (1878), 220. A thick and thundery haze that gave a red and lurid tinge to the coast we were leaving.
1878. Stewart & Tait, Unseen Univ., ii. § 84. 93. A gleam of lurid light seemed for a moment to illuminate the thick darkness.
b. Said hyperbolically of the eyes, countenance, etc.
1746. T. Seward, Conformity betw. Popery & Paganism, 55. The prating Grandame … His Lips … with lustral Juices arms From lurid Eyes and fascinating Charms [= urentes oculos inhibere perita, Persius II. v. 35].
1826. Disraeli, Viv. Grey, III. vi. The lurid glare of the anaconda’s eye.
1852. Mrs. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s C., xxxviii. 335. A softness gathered over the lurid fires of her eye.
1860. Hawthorne, Marble Faun, xix. (1879), I. 191. The glow of rage was still lurid on Donatello’s face.
3. fig. (from either of the preceding senses), with connotation of ‘terrible,’ ‘ominous,’ ‘ghastly,’ sensational.’ Often in phr. to cast or throw a lurid light on (a subject).
1850. Kingsley, Alt. Locke, iv. Woe unto that man on whom that idea, true or false, rises lurid.
1865. Dickens, Mut. Fr., III. iv. Lurid indications of the better marriages she might have made, shone athwart the awful gloom of her composure.
1866. R. W. Dale, Disc. Spec. Occ., viii. 273. The lurid, stormy eloquence of Edmund Burke.
1879. Farrar, St. Paul (1883), 127. He adds one fact more which casts a lurid light on the annals of the persecution.
1899. F. T. Bullen, Log Sea-waif, 182. Peter’s voice prattled on, its lurid language in the strangest contrast to the gentleness of his speech.
4. In scientific use: Of a dingy brown or yellowish-brown color. † Applied spec. to plants of the order Luridæ of Linnæus (see quots. 1822–34).
1767. W. Harte, Christ’s Par. Sower, 41. Lurid hemlock ting’d with pois’nous stains.
1822–34. Good’s Study Med. (ed. 4), II. 587. The lurid and umbellate narcotics. Ibid., IV. 92. Cataplasms of Hemlock, or the other umbellate or lurid plants in common use.
1826. Kirby & Sp., Entomol., IV. 281. Lurid, yellow with some mixture of brown. Dirty yellow.
1839. Lindley, Introd. Bot. (ed. 3), 478. Lurid; dirty brown, a little clouded.
1856. Henslow, Dict. Bot. Terms, Lurid, of a dingy brown, grey with orange.
1871. Darwin, Desc. Man, II. xii. 25. In many species the body presents strongly contrasted, though lurid tints.
1871. W. A. Leighton, Lichen-flora, 400. Ardellæ depressed, lurid, dark-purplish.
Hence Luridly adv., Luridness.
1731. Bailey, vol. II., Luridness, black and blueness, paleness, &c.
1795–7. Southey, Min. Poems, Poet. Wks. II. 210. Yon cloud that rolls luridly over the hill Is red with their weapons of fire.
1845. Hirst, Poems, 13. Luridly Coursed the swift lightning through the sky.
1864. Spectator, 20 Aug., 957/1. The writer has deliberately … softened a hundred tints which would have increased the luridness of his picture.
