aureate

adj

1. Golden in color or shine.

   “O wynd of grace, now blowe into my saile, / O auriat lycour of Clyo, for to wryte / Mi penne enspire of that I wold endyte.”

   “And those who husbanded the Golden Grain, / And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain, / Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd, / As, buried once, Men want dug up again.”

   “[CANADIAN] DOLLAR Weight: 7.000 g. Comp[osition]: Aureate-Bronze Plated Nickel Ruler: Elizabeth II Obv[erse]: Young bust right Obv. Des[igner]: Arnold Machin Rev[erse]: Loon right, date and denomination below Rev. Des.: Robert R. Carmichael Shape: 11-sided Size: 26.5 mm.”

2. (rhetoric)Of language: characterized by the use of (excessively) ornamental or grandiose terms, often of Latin or French origin.

   “It may, then, be said that aureate terms were those new words, chiefly Romance or Latinical in origin, continually sought, under authority of criticism and the best writers, for a rich and expressive style in English, from about 1350 to about 1530.”

   “[…] [Stephen] Hawes is the climax of the fifteenth-century kind of aureate diction: after him, nothing was possible but reaction, ridicule, and the creation of a new kind. We have so far tried to avoid defining the word "aureate," but it seems fair by now to describe it as a habitual use of terms which to those using them seemed "wonder nyce and straunge" [Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, bk. 2, l. 24].”