Meaning of frippery | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Ostentation, as in fancy clothing.
   countable, uncountable
2. Useless things; trifles.
   countable, uncountable
3. Cast-off clothes.
   countable, obsolete, uncountable
4. The trade or traffic in old clothes.
   countable, obsolete, uncountable
5. The place where old clothes are sold.
   countable, obsolete, uncountable
6. Hence: secondhand finery; cheap and tawdry decoration; affected elegance.
   countable, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“[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⟳.”

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

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

“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.”

“[…] 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.”

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

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

CEFR level