gild the lily

gild the lily
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gild the lily
To further adorn something that is already beautiful.
You look radiant, as always—wearing such an extravagant gown is just gilding the lily.
See also: gild, lily
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2022 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.
gild the lily
Fig. to add ornament or decoration to something that is pleasing in its original state; to attempt to improve something that is already fine the way it is. (Often refers to flattery or exaggeration.) Your house has lovely brickwork. Don't paint it. That would be gilding the lily. Oh, Sally. You're beautiful the way you are. You don't need makeup. You would be gilding the lily.
See also: gild, lily
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
gild the lily
Add unnecessary adornment or supposed improvement. For example, Offering three different desserts after that elaborate meal would be gilding the lily. This expression is a condensation of Shakespeare's metaphor in King John (4:2): "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily ... is wasteful and ridiculous excess." [c. 1800]
See also: gild, lily
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
gild the lily
If someone gilds the lily, they try to improve something which is already very good, and so what they are doing is unnecessary. There can be a temptation to gild the lily in such documents, making exaggerated claims about what the school can offer to students. Top the cake with ice cream or whipped cream, if you're keen on gilding the lily. Note: This expression may be based on lines in Shakespeare's `King John' (1595): `To gild refined gold, to paint the lily... Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.' (Act 4, Scene 2)
See also: gild, lily
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2012
gild the lily try to improve what is already beautiful or excellent.
This phrase adapts lines from Shakespeare's King John: ‘To gild refined gold, to paint the lily…Is wasteful and ridiculous excess’.
See also: gild, lily
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017
gild the ;lily try to improve something which is already perfect, and so spoil it: The dress is perfect. Don’t add anything to it at all. It would just be gilding the lily.This comes from Shakespeare’s play King John. Gild means ‘to cover something with a thin layer of gold’. A lily is a very beautiful flower.
See also: gild, lily
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017
gild the lily
1. To adorn unnecessarily something already beautiful.
2. To make superfluous additions to what is already complete.
See also: gild, lily
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
gild the lily, to
To add excessive ornament; to pile excess on excess. This term is a condensation of Shakespeare’s statement in King John (4.2), “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily . . . is wasteful and ridiculous excess.” Earlier (sixteenth-century) versions of this idea cited whitening ivory with ink (Erasmus, Adagia) and painting fine marble (George Pettie, Petite Pallace). Byron quoted Shakespeare correctly (“But Shakespeare also says, ’tis very silly to gild refined gold, or paint the lily”), in Don Juan (1818), but sometime during the succeeding years it became the clich; we now know.
See also: gild, to
The Dictionary of Clich;s by Christine Ammer Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer
gild the lily
Engage in an unnecessary and usually wasteful activity. Like carrying coals to Newcastle, to gild a lily would be a waste of time as the flower already possesses more than sufficient beauty. The phrase comes from a misquotation of lines from Shakespeare's King John: Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily . . . Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
See also: gild, lily
Endangered Phrases by Steven D. Price Copyright © 2011 by Steven D. Price
See also:
gild the lily, to
gilding
lily
paint the lily
no expense is spared
spare no expense
spare no expense/pains/trouble doing something
top (something) with (something)
top with
adorn with


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Do you 'gild' the lily or 'paint' it?
A Shakespearean comedy of errors
Many people love Shakespeare, which is something that we are in favor of. Many people also love accuracy in quoting literary sources, which is likewise something that we are in favor of. Given that we are in favor of these two things, some might wonder why it is that we have a definition for an idiom that is a misquote of the Bard, gild the lily.

lily flowers
Mistaken identity in a Shakespeare play? Now we've heard it all.

We define gild the lily as “to add unnecessary ornamentation to something beautiful in its own right.” We do not attribute this to Shakespeare, as he never wrote this particular combination of words. Gild the lily came about as a mistaken version of a line from King John, which was “to gild refined gold, to paint the lily.”


Therefore, to be possess'd with double pompe,
To guard a Title, that was rich before;
To gilde refined Gold, to paint the Lilly;
To throw a perfume on the Violet,
To smooth the yce, or adde another hew
Vnto the Raine-bow; or with Taper-light
To seeke the beauteous eye of heauen to garnish,
Is wastefull, and ridiculous excesse.
— William Shakespeare, King John, 1623

Gild, for those who are wondering, may be defined as “to overlay with or as if with a thin covering of gold.” In the 18th and early 19th centuries we see evidence of writers using paint the lily, throw a perfume on the violet, and gilding refined gold, as examples of adding unnecessary ornamentation.

The work now submitted to the public stands in a very different predicament from any I have mentioned, or alluded to; for though it can neither help us “to paint the lily,” or “throw a perfume on the violet;” it may, by an humble attendance on, give a consequence to, or by its meanness degrade, the company it has had the temerity to intrude into.
— F.G. Waldron, Continuation of Ben Jonson's sad shepherd, 1783

But this luxuriance of proof and instance is painting the lily and gilding refined gold; the evidence is perfectly irresistible.
— Monthly Magazine (London, Eng.), Aug. 1826

By the middle of the 19th century we begin to see the order get a bit mixed up, and writers begin to refer to the lily as the thing to be gilded.


To praise her, besides, would be gilding the lily, painting refined gold, or something of that sort.
— Harry Zona, Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times (New York, NY), 11 Aug.1866

To remark upon or add anything to this eminently tasteful and patriotic e=sentiment, would—in the words of one of our local orators of former days—be to “gild the lily and paint refined gold.”
— The Times of India (Mumbai, Ind.), 18 May 1872

To sketch the Hon. Edward Spicer Cleveland is as impossible and superfluous as to gild the lily.
— Hartford Daily Courant, 29 Sept. 1886

The reason we enter the not-as-Shakespeare-wrote-it version of this idiom is because it has become far more common than paint the lily (although you may use this as well). Our dictionary aims to provide a record of the language as it is currently used, rather than a record of how Shakespeare wrote (although these two things do often overlap). Some have speculated that gild the lily has been so successful because the repeated -il sounds of gild and lily make it memorable.


You may continue to use gild the lily, and if anyone points out that you are misquoting Shakespeare you may simply inform them that you are using a well-established English idiom, and not misquoting anyone. Or you can reply with an accurate quote from Shakespeare; we’ve always been fond of a certain line from Coriolanus: “I Find the Ass in Compound with the Major Part of Your Syllables.”

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The name and the era

First edition cover of The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873), a collaborative novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
The Gilded Age, the term for the period of economic boom which began after the American Civil War and ended at the turn of the century, was applied to the era by 1920s historians who took the term from one of Mark Twain's lesser-known novels, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873). The book (co-written with Charles Dudley Warner) satirized the promised "golden age" after the Civil War, portrayed as an era of serious social problems masked by a thin gold gilding of economic expansion.[4] In the 1920s, and 1930s, the metaphor "Gilded Age" began to be applied to a designated period in American history. The term was adopted by literary and cultural critics as well as historians, including Van Wyck Brooks, Lewis Mumford, Charles Austin Beard, Mary Ritter Beard, Vernon Louis Parrington, and Matthew Josephson. For them, Gilded Age was a pejorative term for a time of materialistic excesses combined with extreme poverty.[5][6]

The early half of the Gilded Age roughly coincided with the middle portion of the Victorian Era in Britain and the Belle ;poque in France. With respect to eras of American history, historical views vary as to when the Gilded Age began, ranging from starting right after the Civil War ended in 1865, or 1873, or as the Reconstruction Era ended in 1877.[7] The date marking the end of the Gilded Age also varies. The ending is generally given as the beginning of the Progressive Era in the 1890s (sometimes the United States presidential election of 1896).[8][9][10][11]