Advertisement
Advertisement
gild
1[ gild ]
verb (used with object)
- to coat with gold, gold leaf, or a gold-colored substance.
- to give a bright, pleasing, or specious aspect to.
- Archaic. to make red, as with blood.
gild
2[ gild ]
noun
gild
1/ ɡɪ /
verb
- to cover with or as if with gold
- gild the lily
- to adorn unnecessarily something already beautiful
- to praise someone inordinately
- to give a falsely attractive or valuable appearance to
- archaic.to smear with blood
gild
2/ ɡɪ /
noun
- a variant spelling of guild
Derived Forms
- ˈ, noun
- ˈ, noun
Other Word Forms
- a· adjective
Word History and Origins
Word History and Origins
Origin of gild1
Idioms and Phrases
- gild the lily, to add unnecessary ornamentation, a special feature, etc., in an attempt to improve something that is already complete, satisfactory, or ideal:
After that wonderful meal, serving a fancy dessert would be gilding the lily.
Example Sentences
And yet the chapels, mosaics and gilded wood of Santa Maria Maggiore remain stunning.
Most supermarket hams are already fully cooked, which means your job isn’t to roast so much as to gild the lily.
I’m struck by your reference there to how this kind of post-Reconstruction, gilded, social Darwinist era kind of paved the road for fascism to come later.
Then he tried to gild the lily by saying the Great Depression would have never happened if there had been tariffs at the time.
He repeatedly shouted that Trump has "no mandate to cut Medicaid" while pointing his gilded cane toward the podium.
Advertisement
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Browse