2 Metaphors for flourish

But Katherine had a way with her that compelled respect; moreover, she was a downright gritty girl, as he expressed it: so the hat-flourish was really a tribute to her strength of character.

No doubt Sterne's flourish in Tristram Shandy about his preferring to die at an inn, untroubled by the spectacle of "the concern of my friends, and the last services of wiping my brows and smoothing my pillow," was a mere piece of bravado; and the more probably so because the reflection is appropriated almost bodily from Bishop Burnet, who quotes it as a frequent observation of Archbishop Leighton.

2 Metaphors for  flourish