Ro-cō'co, a. & n.

a. & n. [Of uncertain etymology.] A kind of florid ornamentation, which prevailed, more especially in France, at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries.

It consisted chiefly in reviving and exaggerating the style of the age of Louis XIV. and XV., in respect to architecture, landscape gardening, furniture, utensils, and the interior decorations of buildings. By some it has been thought to be rich; though luxuriant; and by others it is condemned as a weak attempt to refine and improve upon the purest models of art, producing capricious, fantastical, or childish results. The term has been sometimes extended so as to embrace a taste for the ornaments of China and Japan, and is generally used, as stated by Bescherelle, to denote what is outré or fantastic in decorative art.