Purple Prose

Purple prose

In literary criticism, purple prose is overly ornate prose text that may disrupt a narrative flow by drawing undesirable attention to its own extravagant style of writing, thereby diminishing the appreciation of the prose overall. Purple prose is characterized by the excessive use of adjectives, adverbs, and metaphors. When it is limited to certain passages, they may be termed purple patches or purple passages, standing out from the rest of the work.

Prose

Prose is language that is natural or normal in structure: following the spontaneous flow of conversational speech, without any perfectly regular rhythm; containing ordinary grammar patterns; or, in writing, aligning to typical conventions and formatting. It thus can range in its exact medium from informal everyday speaking to formal academic writing. Prose differs most notably from poetry, which follows some type of contrived intentional rhythm or other artistically crafted structure or pattern. Poetic structures vary dramatically by language; in English poetry, for instance, language is often organized by a rhythmic metre or rhyme scheme.

Purple

Purple is a color similar in appearance to violet light. In the RYB color model historically used in the arts, purple is a secondary color created by combining red and blue pigments. In the CMYK color model used in modern printing, purple is made by combining magenta pigment with cyan pigment, black pigment, or both. In the RGB color model used in computer and television screens, purple is created by mixing red and blue light in order to create colors that appear similar to violet light. According to color theory, purple is considered a cool color.

purple prose

Noun

1. Extravagant or flowery writing, especially in a literary work.