Words that are easily confused

Luxuriant / luxurious

The adjective luxuriant is often used for something that grows richly and profusely, such as hair or leaves in forests. If something is luxuriant, it is abundant, flourishing, and dense. The term luxuriant derives from a Latin word meaning exuberant in growth or quantity.

The adjective luxurious means extremely comfortable, elegant, or enjoyable, especially in a way that costs a lot of money. If something is luxurious, it might be described as opulent, sumptuous, expensive, costly, lavish, extravagant, ornate, or deluxe. The word luxurious originates in a Latin term referring to excess, extravagance, and magnificence.

So as we see, the word luxuriant may mean that something is abundant, but without any association to cost or expense. If the word luxurious is used, then money is involved. One way to keep the two words apart in our minds might be to invent a simple rhyme:

I am curious about whether the hotel is luxurious.

This may help us to recall that the adjective luxurious always has to do with expensive comforts, while the adjective luxuriant does not have these associations.

Here are some usage examples:

• Zone D finds Worawit Laokwasathit and his family making luxuriant paintings of rural life and nature scenes.
• There’s nothing quite as satisfying as pulling out a couple of luxuriant golden-brown thousand-dollar Hong Kong bills from your wallet to pay for that meal at a fancy restaurant. The trouble is, the banknote may one day be out of circulation.
• Bardi injects modernism into sensual, sleek and luxuriant clothes that might be athletic or hi-tech.
• The brand also pushes fabric choice to the limits, with luxuriantly coloured Japanese silk, bright pink tulle and exuberant embroidery adding a stunning dimension.
• In the time of the Arabs these were the chief canals, and the cuts from the main channels of the Nahr `Isa, Nahr Sarsar, Nahr Malk (or Nahr Malcha), and Nahr Kutha, reticulating the entire country between the rivers, converted it into a continuous and luxuriant garden.
• Except such as are of coral formation, the Antilles are hilly, not to say mountainous, their summits rising in places to an elevation of 8000 ft., and nearly all, prior to their occupation by Europeans, were covered with luxuriant forest, which, assisting in the collection and condensation of the clouds brought by the trade winds, ensured its own vitality by precipitating frequent and long-continued rains; upon the fertile soil.
• The surface of the summit (the highest point is variously stated at 3549, 35 82 and 3850 ft.) is broken into small valleys and hills, and is covered with luxuriant vegetation, its flora including the superb orchid Disa grandiflora and the well-known silver tree.
• Ranking during the early centuries of its existence as one of the greatest cities of Islam, Marrakesh has long been in a state of grievous decay, but it is rendered attractive by the exceptional beauty of its situation, the luxuriant groves and gardens by which it is encompassed and interspersed, and the magnificent outlook which it enjoys towards the mountains.
• But while the province in many parts presents a landscape of luxuriant beauty, it is a prey to the ravages of disease, principally malarial fevers due to the extensive swamps formed by waters stagnating in the forests, and to the frequent incursions of the Goklan and Yomut Turkomans, who have their camping-grounds in the northern part of the province, and until about 1890 plundered caravans sometimes at the very gates of Astarabad city, and carried people off into slavery and bondage.
• Water is plentiful in the Elburz, and situated in well-watered valleys and gorges are innumerable flourishing villages, embosomed in gardens and orchards, with extensive cultivated fields and meadows, and at higher altitudes small plateaus, under snow until March or April, afford cool camping grounds to the nomads of the plains, and luxuriant grazing to their sheep and cattle during the summer.
• In the mountain region the soil is mostly a sandy loam composed of disintegrated granitic gneiss and organic matter; on the lower and more gentle slopes as well as in the valleys this is generally deep enough for a luxuriant vegetable growth but on the upper and more precipitous slopes it is thin, or the rocks are entirely bare.
• Albemarle county was then in the frontier wilderness of the Blue Ridge, and was very different, socially, from the lowland counties where ‘a few broad-acred families dominated an open-handed, somewhat luxurious and assertive aristocracy.
• The Latin hexameter, which in Ennius and Lucretius was the organ of the more dignified and majestic emotions, became in his hands the most perfect measure in which the softer and more luxurious sentiment of nature has been expressed.
• In the age succeeding the Mahommedan conquest the exilarch was noted for the stately retinue that accompanied him, the luxurious banquets given at his abode, and the courtly etiquette that prevailed there.
• By his luxurious habits and his lavish expenditure on public buildings he piled up a great accumulation of debt, which was partly discharged by the estates of the land in return for important concessions.
• When the Romans became masters of the world, many of their upper classes, both before the close of the republic and under the empire, from a love of Greek manners and literature or from indolent and effeminate habits, resorted to Neapolis, either for the education and the cultivation of gymnastic exercises or for the enjoyment of music and of a soft and luxurious climate.
• A similar plot and rebellion took place in the province of Pernambuco, where the inhabitants of the important commercial city of Recife (Pernambuco) were jealous of Rio and the sacrifices they were compelled to make for the support of the luxurious court there.
• About this time he was appointed to a canonry in Utrecht and to another in Aix-la-Chapelle, and the life of the brilliant young scholar was rapidly becoming luxurious, secular and selfish, when a great spiritual change passed over him which resulted in a final renunciation of every worldly enjoyment.
• It is divided into two parts by a small headland once the site of the villa of the empress Eugenie, between which and the main promontory are the two casinos, the principal baths and many luxurious villas and fine hotels.
• In the decorative arts the Nuremberg handicraftsman attained great perfection in ministering to the luxurious tastes of the burghers, and a large proportion of the old German furniture, silver-plate, stoves and the like, which are now admired in industrial museums, was made in Nuremberg workshops.
• Art industries, particularly those which appeal to the luxurious taste of the inhabitants in fitting their houses, such as wall-papers and furniture, and those which are included in the equipment of ocean-going steamers, have of late years made rapid strides and are among the best productions of this character of any German city.
• By his vast expenditure, ascribable not only to his wars in Italy, his incessant embassies, and the necessity of defending himself in the Comtat Venaissin against the incursions of the adventurous Raymond of Turenne, but also to his luxurious tastes and princely habits, as well as by his persistent refusal to refer the question of the schism to a council, he incurred general reproach.
• He restored to the royal domain the lands that had been usurped by the great nobles and by the church; he maintained at Paris a luxurious, though, from the example he himself set, a disorderly court; he was a patron of the arts, and delighted in the exquisite craftsmanship of his treasurer, the goldsmith St Eloi.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)