Gaudy means brightly coloured in a showy tasteless way. Gaudy colours, a gaudy shirt, gaudy decoration.
It is always a criticism and always about excess rather than brightness alone — a gaudy thing is trying too hard. Taste being what it is, yesterday's gaudy is often today's charming. Note that a gaudy is also an Oxford college feast, which is a separate use of the same Latin root meaning joy.
1adjectivegaudyBrightly coloured in a showy tasteless way.
“He wore a gaudy orange and purple jacket covered in gold buttons.”
synonyms: garish, flashy
gaudy is a quality of showy excess.
Middle English gaudi comes from Old French, from Latin gaudium, joy. The college feast called a gaudy comes from the same joy.
Medieval Latin
gaudia
Old French
gaudie
Middle English
gaudi
English, today
gaudy
Built from
From Middle English gaudi, from Old French gaudie, from Medieval Latin gaudia. equivalent to gaud + y. Alternatively, from Middle English gaudi, gawdy (“yellowish”), from Old French gaude, galde (“weld (the plant)”), from Frankish walda, from Proto-Germanic walþō, walþijō, akin to Old English weald, wielde (>Middle English welde, wolde and Anglo-Latin walda (“alum”)), Middle Low German wolde, Middle Dutch woude. More at English weld. A common claim that the word derives from Antoni Gaudí, designer of Barcelona's Sagrada Família Basilica, is incorrect: the word was in use centuries before Gaudí was born.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA