[f. L. turgid-us (see prec.) + -ITY.
1. The state of being turgid or swollen.
1732. Arbuthnot, Rules of Diet, iii. in Aliments, etc., 363. Weakness, Wateryness and Turgidity of the eyes.
1820. T. Jefferson, Writ. (1830), IV. 323. The tendency to turgidity may proceed from debility alone.
1854. Jones & Siev., Pathol. Anat. (1874), 255. Turgidity of the blood-vessels.
1875. Bennett & Dyer, trans. Sachs’ Bot., 700. By Turgidity we understand the hydrostatic pressure which the water absorbed by endosmose exercises equally on all sides on the cell-wall.
2. fig. Inflation of language; grandiloquence, pomposity, bombast; also with a and pl. an example of this.
1756–82. J. Warton, Ess. Pope (ed. 4), I. iii. 103. Obscurity or turgidity, and a false grandeur of diction.
1788. Lond. Mag., 247. They appear to abound with turgidities, and, if they can be called splendid, to dazzle by their splendour.
1827. Hare, Guesses, Ser. I. (1847), 62. The empty turgidity of Dryden.
1903. Edin. Rev., April, 320. We are willing to forget the latter turgidities [of a poem].
