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Frippery
Definitions
- 1 Ostentation, as in fancy clothing. countable, uncountable
"Young women of such birth, living in a quiet country-house, and attending a village church hardly larger than a parlor, naturally regarded frippery as the ambition of a huckster’s daughter."
- 2 something of little value or significance wordnet
- 3 Useless things; trifles. countable, uncountable
"[Olmsted reiterated his insistence that in Chicago] simplicity and reserve will be practiced and petty effects and frippery avoided."
- 4 Cast-off clothes. countable, obsolete, uncountable
"If thou doſt, come ouer, and but ſee our fripperie: change an olde ſhirt, for a whole ſmocke, with vs."
- 5 The trade or traffic in old clothes. countable, obsolete, uncountable
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- 6 The place where old clothes are sold. countable, obsolete, uncountable
"Oh, ho, Monſter: wee know what belongs to a frippery, O King Stephano."
- 7 Hence: secondhand finery; cheap and tawdry decoration; affected elegance. countable, uncountable
"There's my pretty darling Kate; the faſhions of the times have almoſt infected her too. By living a year or two in town, ſhe is as fond of gauze, and French frippery, as the beſt of them."
Etymology
From French friperie, from Old French fripier (“to rub up and down, to wear into rags”). Compare fripper.
See also for "frippery"
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