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LIVID
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Furiously angry
Example:
willful stupidity makes him absolutely livid
Classified under:
Similar:
angry (feeling or showing anger)
Domain usage:
colloquialism (a colloquial expression; characteristic of spoken or written communication that seeks to imitate informal speech)
Derivation:
lividity (a state of fury so great the face becomes discolored)
Sense 2
Meaning:
(of a light) imparting a deathlike luminosity
Example:
a thousand flambeaux...turned all at once that deep gloom into a livid and preternatural day
Classified under:
Similar:
light (characterized by or emitting light)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Anemic looking from illness or emotion
Example:
a face white with rage
Synonyms:
ashen; blanched; bloodless; livid; white
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
colorless; colourless (weak in color; not colorful)
Derivation:
lividity; lividness (unnatural lack of color in the skin (as from bruising or sickness or emotional distress))
Sense 4
Meaning:
Discolored by coagulation of blood beneath the skin
Example:
livid bruises
Synonyms:
black-and-blue; livid
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
injured (harmed)
Derivation:
lividness (unnatural lack of color in the skin (as from bruising or sickness or emotional distress))
Context examples:
Upon my word, Watson, there is something very attractive about that livid face at the window, and I would not have missed the case for worlds.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
At Sir Nigel's words he started violently, and his swarthy features blanched to a livid gray.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He bared his wrist, and offered it to me: the blood was forsaking his cheek and lips, they were growing livid; I was distressed on all hands.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
About five in the morning I discovered my lovely boy, whom the night before I had seen blooming and active in health, stretched on the grass livid and motionless; the print of the murder’s finger was on his neck.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
The last conscious effort which imagination made was to show me a livid white face bending over me out of the mist. I must be careful of such dreams, for they would unseat one's reason if there were too much of them.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
He slunk away with a livid face and two venomous eyes which uttered more threats than his tongue could do.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
There, clinging to the stout halliards of the sheet, he gazed with amazement at the long lines of black waves, each with its curling ridge of foam, racing in endless succession from out the inexhaustible west. A huge sombre cloud, flecked with livid blotches, stretched over the whole seaward sky-line, with long ragged streamers whirled out in front of it.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
My hopes were all dead—struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Delighted and surprised, I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
The face which she turned towards us was of the strangest livid tint, and the features were absolutely devoid of any expression.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
