Adjacent Words

Frippery definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

FRIP'PERY, n.
1. Old clothes; cast dresses; clothes thrown aside, after wearing. Hence, waste matter; useless things; trifles; as the frippery of wit.
2. The place where old clothes are sold.
3. The trade or traffic in old clothes.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: something of little value or significance [syn: bagatelle, fluff, frippery, frivolity]

Merriam Webster's

noun (plural -peries) Etymology: Middle French friperie, alteration of Old French freperie, from frepe old garment Date: 1568 1. obsolete a. cast-off clothes b. archaic a place where old clothes are sold 2. a. finery; also an elegant or showy garment b. something showy, frivolous, or nonessential c. ostentation; especially something foolish or affectedly elegant

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. & adj. --n. (pl. -ies) 1 showy, tawdry, or unnecessary finery or ornament, esp. in dress. 2 empty display in speech, literary style, etc. 3 a knick-knacks, trifles. b a knick-knack or trifle. --adj. 1 frivolous. 2 contemptible. Etymology: F friperie f. OF freperie f. frepe rag

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Frippery Frip"per*y, n. [F. friperie, fr. fruper. See Fripper.] 1. Coast-off clothes. [Obs.] --B. Jonson. 2. Hence: Secondhand finery; cheap and tawdry decoration; affected elegance. Fond of gauze and French frippery. --Goldsmith. The gauzy frippery of a French translation. --Sir W. Scott. 3. A place where old clothes are sold. --Shak. 4. The trade or traffic in old clothes.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Frippery Frip"per*y, a. Trifling; contemptible.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(fripperies) If you refer to something as frippery, you mean that it is silly or unnecessary, and only done or worn for pleasure (mainly BRIT) ...all the fripperies with which the Edwardian woman indulged herself. ...a sombre display, with no frills or frippery. N-UNCOUNT: also N in pl [disapproval]

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Old clothes, cast-off dresses. 2. Trumpery, second-hand finery. 3. Trifling, trifles, stuff, nonsense, fribbling. See flummery.

Moby Thesaurus

Sunday best, a continental, a curse, a damn, a darn, a hoot, bagatelle, bauble, bean, bedizenment, bibelot, bit, brass farthing, bravery, button, cent, chiffon, clinquant, curio, duplication, duplication of effort, embellishment, expletive, extravagance, fancy dress, farce, farthing, fat, feather, featherbedding, festoons, fig, filling, finery, fleabite, folderol, foofaraw, fribble, frill, frilliness, frilling, frills, frills and furbelows, froufrou, full dress, fuss, gaiety, gaud, gaudery, gewgaw, gilding, gilt, gimcrack, gingerbread, hair, halfpenny, hill of beans, jest, joke, kickshaw, knickknack, knickknackery, luxury, minikin, mockery, molehill, needlessness, ornamentation, overadornment, overlap, padding, party dress, paste, payroll padding, peppercorn, picayune, pin, pinch of snuff, pinchbeck, pinprick, pleonasm, prolixity, rap, red cent, redundance, redundancy, regalia, row of pins, rush, shit, snap, sneeshing, sou, straw, superfluity, superfluousness, tautology, tinsel, toy, trappings, trickery, trifle, trinket, triviality, trumpery, tuppence, two cents, twopence, unnecessariness, verbosity, war paint, whim-wham