festoon means an ornament such as a garland or chain which hangs loosely from two tacked spots. It carries an Arena rating of 1554, earned across 4 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, festoon ranks #266 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words, #573 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #1,120 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #1,484 of 17,140 for Most Whimsical Words.
festoon is pronounced /fɛsˈtuːn/.
Why “festoon” is a great word
A decorative chain or strip of flowers, foliage, or ribbons suspended in a curve between two points. From French feston (16th c.), from Italian festone, likely from festa ("feast") with the augmentative suffix -one, hence "a festive ornament"; first attested in English in the 1620s. Unlike a "garland," which forms a closed loop, or a "swag," which drapes as a single piece, a festoon is a connected series strung in a deliberate arc. It is the precise curvature of paper bells above a dance floor, the heavy swoop of ivy between marble pillars, and the momentary bridge of lights over a darkened street—a captured parabola of celebration, holding its shape just until the morning when it sags, spent, its festive tension gone.
Etymology
Borrowed from French feston.
noun
- An ornament such as a garland or chain which hangs loosely from two tacked spots.
- A bas-relief, painting, or structural motif resembling such an ornament.
- A raised cable with light globes attached.
- A cloud on Jupiter that hangs out of its home belt or zone into an adjacent area forming a curved finger-like image or a complete loop back to its home belt or zone.
- Any of a series of wrinkles on the backs of some ticks.
- A specific style of electric light bulb consisting of a cylindrical enclosure with two points of contact on either end providing power to the filament or diode.
- Two sets of rollers used to create a buffer of material on web handling equipment.
- Any of various papilionid butterflies of the genus Zerynthia.
- Texturing applied to a denture to simulate human tissue.
verb
- To decorate as if with ornaments, such as garlands or chains, which hang loosely from two tacked spots.e.g.“The tree trunks and the creepers that festooned them lost themselves in a green dusk thirty feet above him, and all about was the undergrowth.” — 1954, William Golding, chapter 3, in Lord of the Flies, →ISBN, page 48:
- To make festoons.
- To decorate or bedeck abundantly.e.g.“He was bewildered by how the car was festooned with polka dots.”
- To apply texturing to (a denture) to simulate human tissue.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.