Showiness is the quality of being flashy, attention-grabbing, or designed to impress. When something has showiness, it's meant to catch your eye and make you notice it, sometimes in ways that feel a bit too much.

A peacock spreading its colorful tail feathers displays natural showiness. A car covered in chrome and glitter has showiness. When someone wears an outfit with sequins, bright colors, and lots of jewelry all at once, that's showiness too.

The word often suggests that something is more about looking impressive than actually being impressive. A science fair project might have lots of showiness with flashing lights and a fancy display board, but if the actual experiment underneath isn't well thought out, all that flash doesn't mean much. On the other hand, sometimes showiness is exactly what you want: fireworks displays are supposed to be showy, and nobody complains about that.

Related words include showy (the adjective form, as in “a showy performance”) and show-off (someone who constantly tries to impress others). When you describe something as having showiness, you're usually pointing out that it's designed to attract attention, whether that works in its favor or not.