LIVID

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does livid mean? 

• LIVID (adjective)
  The adjective LIVID has 4 senses:

1. anemic looking from illness or emotion

2. (of a light) imparting a deathlike luminosity

3. furiously angry

4. discolored by coagulation of blood beneath the skin

  Familiarity information: LIVID used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LIVID (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Anemic looking from illness or emotion

Synonyms:

ashen; blanched; bloodless; livid; white

Context example:

a face white with rage

Similar:

colorless; colourless (weak in color; not colorful)

Derivation:

lividity; lividness (unnatural lack of color in the skin (as from bruising or sickness or emotional distress))

Sense 2

Meaning:

(of a light) imparting a deathlike luminosity

Context example:

a thousand flambeaux...turned all at once that deep gloom into a livid and preternatural day

Similar:

light (characterized by or emitting light)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Furiously angry

Context example:

willful stupidity makes him absolutely livid

Similar:

angry (feeling or showing anger)

Domain usage:

colloquialism (a colloquial expression; characteristic of spoken or written communication that seeks to imitate informal speech)

Derivation:

lividity (a state of fury so great the face becomes discolored)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Discolored by coagulation of blood beneath the skin

Synonyms:

black-and-blue; livid

Context example:

livid bruises

Similar:

injured (harmed)

Derivation:

lividness (unnatural lack of color in the skin (as from bruising or sickness or emotional distress))

 Context examples 

As we went I glanced back, and there was that yellow livid face watching us out of the upper window.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Five little livid spots, the marks of four fingers and a thumb, were printed upon the white wrist.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

On that to the right sat a very tall and well formed man with red hair, a livid face, and a cold blue eye, which had in it something peculiarly sinister and menacing.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

One day, while I was gradually recovering, I was seated in a chair, my eyes half open and my cheeks livid like those in death.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Mugridge’s face was livid with fear at what he had done and at what he might expect sooner or later from the man he had stabbed.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The first represented clouds low and livid, rolling over a swollen sea: all the distance was in eclipse; so, too, was the foreground; or rather, the nearest billows, for there was no land.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

One funnel-shaped depression in the morass, of a livid green in color from some lichen which festered in it, will always remain as a nightmare memory in my mind.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As I watched the captain’s face flush fiery-red, and then turn to a livid white as he listened to those bitter words which told him of his infamy, my revenge was sweeter—far sweeter—than my most pleasant dreams had ever pictured it.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The beautiful colour became livid, the eyes seemed to throw out sparks of hell-fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the folds of the flesh were the coils of Medusa's snakes, and the lovely, blood-stained mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of the Greeks and Japanese.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow—a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)