By Richard Nordquist
Updated March 03, 2019

A generally pejorative term for writing or speech characterized by ornate, flowery, or hyperbolic language is known as purple prose. Contrast it with plain style.

"The double meaning of the term purple is useful," says Stephen H. Webb. "[I]t is both imperial and regal, demanding attention, and overly ornate, ostentatious, even marked by profanity" (Blessed Excess, 1993).
Bryan Garner notes that purple prose "derives from the Latin phrase purpureus pannus, which appears in the Ars Poetica of Horace (65-68 B.C.)" (Garner's Modern American Usage, 2009).
Examples and Observations:

"Once in the hands of Duncan Nicol it was translated, as by consecration in the name of a divinity more benevolent than all others, into pisco punch, the wonder and glory of San Francisco’s heady youth, the balm and solace of fevered generations, a drink so endearing and inspired that although its prototype has vanished, its legend lingers on, one with the Grail, the unicorn, and the music of the spheres.”
(Columnist Lucius Beebe, Gourmet magazine, 1957; quoted by M. Carrie Allan in "Spirits: Pisco Punch, a San Francisco Classic Cocktail With Official Aspirations." The Washington Post, October 3, 2014)
"Outside pockets of euphoria in Burnley, Hull and Sunderland, fans have been wallowing in liquor-soaked self-pity as the chill hand of failure gripped them by the neck and flung them mercilessly onto the scrap heap of broken dreams. (Please forgive my purple prose here: as a red of the Stretford variety I am perhaps inappropriately using this week's digest as catharsis, but I'll move on, I promise.)"
(Mark Smith, "The Northerner: United in Grief." The Guardian, May 28, 2009)
"Uncle Tom's Cabin suffers from padding (what the French call remplissage), from improbable plot contrivances, mawkish sentimentality, unevenness in prose quality, and 'purple prose'--sentences like, 'Even so, beloved Eva! fair star of thy dwelling! Thou art passing away; but they that love thee dearest know it not.'"
(Charles Johnson, "Ethics and Literature." Ethics, Literature, and Theory: An Introductory Reader, 2nd ed., edited by Stephen K. George. Rowman & Littlefield, 2005)
Characteristics of Purple Prose
"The culprits of purple prose are usually modifiers that make your writing wordy, overwrought, distracting, and even silly. . . .
"In purple prose, skin is always creamy, eyelashes always glistening, heroes always brooding, and sunrises always magical. Purple prose also features an abundance of metaphors and figurative language, long sentences, and abstractions."
(Jessica Page Morrell, Between the Lines. Writer's Digest Books, 2006)

The term purple prose is derived from a reference by the Roman poet Horace[3][4] (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65–8 BC) who wrote in his Ars Poetica (lines 14–21):[5]

Inceptis grauibus plerumque et magna professis
purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter
adsuitur pannus, cum lucus et ara Dianae
et properantis aquae per amoenos ambitus agros
aut flumen Rhenum aut pluuius describitur arcus;
sed nunc non erat his locus. Et fortasse cupressum
scis simulare; quid hoc, si fractis enatat exspes
nauibus, aere dato qui pingitur?


Weighty openings and grand declarations often
Have one or two purple patches tacked on, that gleam
Far and wide, when Diana's grove and her altar,
The winding stream hastening through lovely fields,
Or the river Rhine, or the rainbow’s being described.
There’s no place for them here. Perhaps you know how
To draw a cypress tree: so what, if you’ve been given
Money to paint a sailor plunging from a shipwreck
In despair?[6][7]

(from Wikipedia)