WORD OF THE DAY: FULSOME
adjective | FULL-sum
What it Means
Fulsome describes someone or something that is generous in amount, extent, or spirit.
// They were fulsome in their praise of her efforts to raise money for the new wing of the children’s hospital.
// A day after offering a weak non-apology for instigating a bases-clearing brawl, the pitcher expressed more fulsome regrets at a press conference, taking full responsibility.
FULSOME IN CONTEXT
“… her archive, now kept at Yale University, forms the basis of this lusty, vibrant and fittingly multi-textured bio-doc that pays fulsome tribute to [Barbara] Hammer’s shapeshifting, once undervalued but now increasingly revered talent.” — Leslie Felperin The Hollywood Reporter, 4 Sept. 2026
DID YOU KNOW
In the 19th century, fulsome was mostly a literary term used disapprovingly to describe excessive, insincere praise and flattery. This meaning is still current, but since the early 20th century fulsome has been increasingly used with far more positive meanings, among them “abundant, copious” (as in “wrote in fulsome detail”) and “full and well developed” (as in “a fulsome voice”). The result is some amount of confusion: a phrase like “fulsome praise” used today without clarifying context may rightly be understood to mean either “abundant praise” or “excessive and obsequious praise.” While some critics object to the pleasanter meanings of fulsome, they are in fact true to the word’s origins: when it was first used in the 14th century, fulsome meant “abundant, copious.”
Merriam Webster Dictionary
