frippery

English

Etymology

From French friperie, from Old French fripier (“to rub up and down, to wear into rags”). Compare fripper.

Pronunciation

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Noun

frippery (countable and uncountable, plural fripperies)

1. Ostentation, as in fancy clothing.
2. Useless things; trifles.
   • 1892 April, Frederick Law Olmsted, Report by F.L.O., quoted in 2003, Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, New York, N.Y.: Crown Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 170:

     [Olmsted reiterated his insistence that in Chicago] simplicity and reserve will be practiced and petty effects and frippery avoided.

   • 2014 October 21, Oliver Brown, “Oscar Pistorius jailed for five years – sport afforded no protection against his tragic fallibilities: Bladerunner's punishment for killing Reeva Steenkamp is but a frippery when set against the burden that her bereft parents, June and Barry, must carry [print version: No room for sentimentality in this tragedy, 13 September 2014, p. S22]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Sport)‎^[1]:

     [Oscar] Pistorius's punishment for killing her [Reeva Steenkamp] that night is but a frippery when set against the burden that her bereft parents, June and Barry, must carry.

3. (obsolete) Cast-off clothes.
   • 1598, Ben Jonson, Every Man in His Humour‎^[2]:

     Yet, if thou dost, come over, and but see our frippery; change an old shirt for a whole smock with us...

4. (obsolete) The trade or traffic in old clothes.
5. (obsolete) The place where old clothes are sold.
   • 1610, The Tempest, by Shakespeare, act 4 scene 1

     O, ho, monster! we know what belongs to a frippery.

6. Hence: secondhand finery; cheap and tawdry decoration; affected elegance.
   • Oliver Goldsmith

     fond of gauze and French frippery

   • Sir Walter Scott

     the gauzy frippery of a French translation

Translations

Useless things; trifles

• Bulgarian: дрънкулки (bg) f pl (drǎnkulki)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Russian: мишура (ru) (mišura), безделушки (ru) (bezdeluški)

References

• 1897 Universal Dictionary of the English Language, Robert Hunter and Charles Morris, eds., v 2 p 2213. [for entries 2, 3, 4, & 5]: Frippery (Page: 597)

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “frippery”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)