Entertainment / Literature / Purple Patch: A section of purple prose or writing that is too ornate or florid for the surrounding plain material, which in turn looks too tranquil or dull by the incongruity of the startling purple patch. The colorful image for this term comes from Horace's Ars Poetica 2.3.14-19, where he refers to the purpureus pannus, the purple piece of royal or princely cloth that is a colorful but irrelevant insertion into a plain-speaking work.
Search Google for Purple Patch:
Patch Adjective Synonyms: area, section, segment, plat, plot, lot, tract, ground, parcel, field
Patch Noun Synonyms: responsibility, area, bailiwick, territory
Patch Adverb Synonyms: piece, scrap, reinforcement, shred, snip, snippet, tatter, pad
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Entertainment / Literature / Purple Prose: Writing that seems overdone or which makes excessive use of imagery, figures of speech, poetic diction, and polysyllabication. These artifices become so overblown that they accidentally become silly o MORE
Lifestyle / Poetry / Purple Passage: Lines that stand out from a longer poem because of their vivid diction or figures of speech, and perhaps because of the agitated flush that rises in the face of someone trying to recite it. MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Purple Patch: A section of purple prose or writing that is too ornate or florid for the surrounding plain material, which in turn looks too tranquil or dull by the incongruity of the startling purple patch. The col MORE