frippery

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

• IPA^(key): /ˈfɹɪpəɹi/

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frippery (countable and uncountable, plural fripperies)

1. Ostentation, as in fancy clothing.
   • 1871, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter I, in Middlemarch […], volume I, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book I:

     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.

   • 1999 July 21, Jonathan Jones, “Grey and grimy alternative to frippery that bespeaks loyalty to welfare state Britain”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     Well, we were probably never going to mistake Gordon Brown for a rococo dandy. Out go Thomas Gainsborough and George Romney with all their 18th century frills and fripperies, like aristocrats deported on the tumbril.

   • 2001 September 18, Audrey Gillan, “London Fashion Week opens”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     The frippery-filled world of fashion confounded its critics yesterday when it became sombre and serious in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the US.

   • 2023 May 8, Nesrine Malik, “The coronation pulled a screen across a desperate, failing nation – just as intended”, in The Guardian‎^[3], →ISSN:

     And so frippery and force combine to make a political position – support for the monarchy – seem like the natural, sacred default.

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.

   • 1900, C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne, The Lost Continent‎^[4]:

     “At any rate you see me still unmarried. I have found no time to palter with the fripperies of women.”

   • 2014 October 21, Oliver Brown, “Oscar Pistorius jailed for five years – sport afforded no protection against his tragic fallibilities”, in The Daily Telegraph (Sport)‎^[5]:

     [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, Beniamin Ionson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “Euery Man in His Humour. A Comœdie. […]”, in The Workes of Beniamin Ionson (First Folio), London: […] Will[iam] Stansby, published 1616, →OCLC, Act I, scene ii, page 9:

     If thou doſt, come ouer, and but ſee our fripperie: change an olde ſhirt, for a whole ſmocke, with vs.

4. (obsolete) The trade or traffic in old clothes.
5. (obsolete) The place where old clothes are sold.
   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i], page 15, column 2:

     Oh, ho, Monſter: wee know what belongs to a frippery, O King Stephano.

6. Hence: secondhand finery; cheap and tawdry decoration; affected elegance.
   • 1773, [Oliver] Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer: Or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. […], London: […] F[rancis] Newbery, […], →OCLC, Act I, page 5:

     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.

   • 1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], chapter XVII, in Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], →OCLC, page 267:

     […] but consider I was born in the land of talisman and spell, and my childhood lulled by tales which you can only enjoy through the gauzy frippery of a French translation.

   • 1846, Charles Dickens, “Rome”, in Pictures from Italy, London: […] Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC, page 166:

     But, there were preparations for a Festa; the pillars of stately marble were swathed in some impertinent frippery of red and yellow […]

   • 1848, anonymous author, “Review of Wuthering Heights”, in Examiner:

     We detest the affectation and effeminate frippery which is but too frequent in the modern novel

• 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)
• “frippery”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.