Paraphernals

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Synonym of paraphernalia (“married woman’s property besides her dowry”). plural, plural-only, rare

    "[…] the said John Lindsay became obliged to restore all things he got with his wife or she brought with her to the said Allexander Cochrane, her father, and the other pursuers, her brethren, and to put everything in the same condition as it was before the marriage, and she haven taken with her the goods and gear following, viz., her Paraphernals and body cloathes, linens, and others, to the value of three hundredth merks Scots: […]"

Example

More examples

"[…] the said John Lindsay became obliged to restore all things he got with his wife or she brought with her to the said Allexander Cochrane, her father, and the other pursuers, her brethren, and to put everything in the same condition as it was before the marriage, and she haven taken with her the goods and gear following, viz., her Paraphernals and body cloathes, linens, and others, to the value of three hundredth merks Scots: […]"

Etymology

From Middle French parapharnelz. By surface analysis, paraphernal + -s. Attested since the early 1500s, whereas the adjective paraphernal since the late 1700s.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.