• IPA: /ˈfʊlsəm/

fulsome (comparative fulsomer, superlative fulsomest)

1. Offensive to good taste, tactless, overzealous, excessive.
   • 1726 October 27, [Jonathan Swift], chapter VIII, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume II, London: Printed for Benj[amin] Motte, […], OCLC 995220039 ↗, part IV (A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms), page 276 ↗:

     [T]he Weather exceeding hot, I entreated him to let me bathe in a River that was near. He conſented, and I immediately ſtripped myſelf ſtark naked, and went down ſoftly into the ſtream. It happened that a young Female Yahoo ſtanding behind a Bank, ſaw the whole proceeding, and enflamed by Deſire, as the Nag and I conjectured, came running with all ſpeed, and leaped into the Water within five Yards of the Place where I bathed. [...] She embraced me after a moſt fulſome manner; [...]

   • 1820 March, [Walter Scott], chapter X, in The Monastery. A Romance. [...] In Three Volumes, volume III, Edinburgh: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Co., and John Ballantyne, […], OCLC 892089409 ↗:

     You will hear the advanced enfans perdus, as the French call them, and so they are indeed, namely, children of the fall, singing unclean and fulsome ballads of sin and harlotrie.

2. Excessively flattering (connoting insincerity).
   • 1889, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “The Yankee and the King Sold as Slaves”, in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, New York, N.Y.: Charles L. Webster & Company, OCLC 1072888 ↗, page 448 ↗:

     And by hideous contrast, a redundant orator was making a speech to another gathering not thirty steps away, in fulsome laudation of "our glorious British liberties!"

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 15: Circe]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare & Co.; Sylvia Beach, OCLC 560090630 ↗; republished London: Published for the Egoist Press, London by John Rodker, Paris, October 1922, OCLC 2297483 ↗, pages 441–442 ↗:

     He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as a Venus in furs [...]

3. mark#Verb|Marked by fullness; abundant, copious.

   The fulsome thanks of the war-torn nation lifted our weary spirits.

4. Fully developed#Adjective|developed; mature#Adjective|mature.

   Her fulsome timbre resonated throughout the hall.

• (offensive) gross
• (abundant, copious) profuse
• (excessively flattering) effusive, unctuous

• German: taktlos, geschmacklos, übereifrig, übertrieben, widerlich

• German: schmeichlerisch, überschwänglich, anbiedernd

• German: reichhaltig, ausgiebig, reichlich, weitschweifig, üppig, überreichlich, uneingeschränkt

• German: reif, vollentwickelt, gereift, entwickelt