Meaning

noun any artificially elegant style of language

noun an elegant style of prose of the Elizabethan period; characterized by balance and antithesis and alliteration and extended similes with and allusions to nature and mythology

originFrom Euphues (Ancient Greek ευφυής (euphuḗs, “graceful, witty”)) + -ism, after the titular character in John Lyly’s didactic romance Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578). Lyly adopted the name from Roger Ascham’s The Scholemaster (published 1570), which describes Euphues as a type of student who is “apte by goodness of witte, and appliable by readiness of will, to learning, hauving all other…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0