frippery
/ˈfɹɪpəɹi/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.57 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Hence: secondhand finery; cheap and tawdry decoration; affected elegance.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "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.”"
Etymology
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
- Root: friperie, fripier