Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Frippery   Listen
noun
Frippery  n.  
1.
Coast-off clothes. (Obs.)
2.
Hence: Secondhand finery; cheap and tawdry decoration; affected elegance. "Fond of gauze and French frippery." "The gauzy frippery of a French translation."
3.
A place where old clothes are sold.
4.
The trade or traffic in old clothes.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Frippery" Quotes from Famous Books



... value of his catch is immediately reduced to something concrete—something he can understand—then we take away the amount of his debt, and if there are still some made beaver remaining, he knows he has something left over to spend for finery and frippery. Rarely does he use these extra skins for the purchase of food or necessary clothing—he contracts a new debt for that. But, wait till spring when the Indians come in, and you will witness the trading for yourself. ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx

... young fops, the senior Ensign and his frippery and his marked attention to Lois, and his mincing but unfeigned devotion to her, had irritated me to the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... slipping into the place he has manoeuvred for at the expense of manliness, truth, consistency, and honesty, does he not conjugate the verb valoir negatively? When Madame Favorita has made her last curtsy for the night behind the foot-lights, has thrown off her tawdry frippery, and sits in her lonely chamber, glowering at the image of the young rival who has won all the applause,—when she bemoans her waning charms and the wearisome life which has lost its sparkle, and sees its emptiness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... smile upon those days, realizing what a ridiculous sight I must have been, but at the time, their tragedy was for me a very real and living one. Newton had passed some years in London, and had picked up there the graces of the court, as well as much of its frippery gossip, which latter he was fond of retailing, to my great disgust, but to the vast entertainment of the ladies, who found no fault with it, though it was four or five years old. He could tell a story well and ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... roadway blazed. Under the shop-blinds, which drooped forward like heavy lids over the tired eyes of the windows, little crowds from Streatham and Kentish Town were shopping. They stared at us. Through the frippery of this market-place we reached the homelier atmosphere of Holborn. The rattle of our boxes' had grown apace, and we made small bets among ourselves as to what the total takings would be. I was thankful when the march ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not the less they hung it round with frippery romance, like the children of the happiest fortune, and talked of "the dear cottage where so many joyful hours had flown." Well, this thatching of hovels is the custom of the country. Women, more than all, are the element and kingdom of illusion. Being fascinated, they fascinate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... the Zoo. "Au Sgarnach," by C.B. PHILLIP. Title difficult to understand. Landscape easy to comprehend. A close study of Nature, admirably painted. A wholesome Phillippic against namby-pamby prettiness. "On the Thames," by G.A. FRIPP, honestly painted, and no frippery about it. Miss CLARA MONTALBA has a large number of pictures of Venice—and Mr. RIDGE comes up and says he is the Keeper. What Keeper? He whispers, he is the Keeper of the Cold Out—What an oridginal remark!—and will I step into the Committee ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various

... wonderful art of preaching sermons which the wheelwright and the blacksmith can understand; not because he talks condescending twaddle, but because he can call a spade a spade, and knows how to disencumber ideas of their wordy frippery. Look at him more attentively, and you will see that his face is a very interesting one —that there is a great deal of humour and feeling playing in his grey eyes, and about the corners of his roughly-cut mouth: a man, you observe, who ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... Yes, I will have nothing on the shoulders but a ribbon, a trifle, just enough to fasten a jewel to—I was afraid that the corsage would look a little bare. Madame Savain had laid on, at intervals, some ridiculous frippery. I wanted to try something else—my plan of crossbars, there and then—and I missed the dear Abbe Gelon's lecture. He was ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... Emanuel Bach, realized this, and gave years to the proper exposition of embellishments. However, the student should realize that the study of embellishments is only a part of the great whole and he should not be misled into accepting every little shake or other little frippery, and then magnifying it into a matter of more vital importance than the ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... the building, that it looked, within, more like a vast pagan toyshop than a Christian church. Here and there, it is true, a pillar or an altar rose unencumbered as of old, appearing as much at variance with the frippery that surrounded it as a text of Scripture quoted in a sermon of the time. But as regarded the general aspect of the basilica, the decent glories of its earlier days seemed irrevocably ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... He disliked frippery, yet withal made a brave show in the sun. His plain black mail was covered with a surcoat of white and green linen; over this a narrow baldrick of red bore in gold stitches his device of a hooded falcon, and his legend on a scroll, many times ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... ambition tells me I might yet be a Londoner! Well, if we ever do move, we have encumbrances the less to impede us; all our furniture has faded under the auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing, like the tarnished frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out of it. I would live in London shirtless, bookless. Henry Crabb is at Rome; advices ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... Life, tho' fiction out may trick her, And in paste gems and frippery deck her; Oh! flickering, feeble, and unsicker I've found her still, Aye wavering like the willow-wicker, 'Tween good ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... furnished by Miss Roberts was that "A lady on ship-board, spruced up for the Park or the Opera, would only be an object of ridicule to her experienced companions. Frippery which would be discarded in England is often useful in India. Members of my sex," she adds, "who have to study economy, can always secure bargains by acquiring at small cost items of fashion which, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... for him, seeing that Tony had no idea of being a humble dependent; but Mr. Webb would occasionally come and dine with him—and often asked him in return. Mrs. Webb too was civil to his wife and the girls—always lent them the Dublin pattern for their frills, frocks, and other frippery—and seldom drove into Drumsna without calling. The consequence was, that the Counsellor was a man after Tony's own heart. Though they were of different religions, they had, generally speaking, the same political feelings and opinions—the same philanthropical principles—and the same ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... finishing touch to the burlesque picture he had drawn of kings in exile. "What a pitiful figure they cut, all these poor princes in partibus, figurants of royalty, who drape themselves in the frippery of the principal characters, and declaim before the empty benches without a farthing of receipts! Would they not be wiser if they held their peace and returned to the obscurity of common life? For those who have money there is some excuse. Their ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... his idol-beetle-fly: Next in an arch, akin to this, His idol-canker seated is: Then in a round is placed by these His golden god, Cantharides. So that, where'er ye look, ye see, No capital, no cornice free, Or frieze, from this fine frippery. Now this the fairies would have known, Theirs is a mixed religion: And some have heard the elves it call Part pagan, part papistical. If unto me all tongues were granted, I could not speak the saints here painted. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... who had rendered the same homage to their deceased wives; and out of the number there must have been so many who had long ago married again! In fine, there was so much in the place that would have seemed more frippery to a stranger, save for the consideration that the lightest paper flower that lay upon the poorest heap of earth was never touched by a rude hand, but ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens

... too late. Defend yourselves against this disintegrating invasion—not by force, be it understood, not by inhospitality or ill-humour—but by disdaining this Occidental rubbish, this last year's frippery by which you are inundated. Try to preserve not only your traditions and your admirable Arab language, but also the grace and mystery that used to characterise your town, the refined luxury of your dwelling-houses. It is not a question now ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... and diamonds! He has money, let him spend it on you; so be it. It is no concern of mine. But as to what I can give you, I will not have the crown-pieces I have picked up with so much toil wasted in carriages and frippery. Those who spend too fast never grow rich. A hundred thousand crowns, which is your fortune, will not buy up Paris. It is all very well to look forward to a few hundred thousand francs to be yours some day; I shall keep you waiting for them as long as possible, by Gad! So I took your lover ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac

... in Rosemary Lane, Wellclose Square, Whitechapel—"a place near the Tower of London where old clothes and frippery are ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... thoughts to their persons. Men order their clothes to be made, and have done with the subject; women make their own clothes, necessary or ornamental, and are continually talking about them; and their thoughts follow their hands. It is not indeed the making of necessaries that weakens the mind; but the frippery of dress. For when a woman in the lower rank of life makes her husband's and children's clothes, she does her duty, this is part of her business; but when women work only to dress better than they could otherwise afford, it is worse than sheer loss ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... among the more serious members of the community. In particular the learned Dr. SHADWELL denounced them with great severity in a leading review, but with little result. They bedizened themselves with frippery, shrieked like parrots on all occasions and interpreted the motto of the time, "Carry On," in a sense deplorably ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various

... strain—that joyous strain? "'Twas such as England loved to hear, "Ere thou and all thy frippery train, "Corrupted both her ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... as neat as you please," interrupted I, "and I shall love you the better for it; but all this is not neatness, but frippery. These rufflings and pinkings and patchings will only make us hated by all the wives of our neighbors. No, my children," continued I, more gravely, "those gowns must be altered into something of a plainer cut, for finery is very unbecoming in us who ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... which were a part of some one else's aesthetic plan. As a matter of fact many of our millionaires would be more at home in an atmosphere concocted from the ingredients of plain pine tables and blanket-covered mattresses than they are surrounded by the frippery of China and the frivolity of France. If these gentlemen were fortunate enough to enjoy sufficient confidence in their own taste to give it a thorough test it is not safe to think of the extreme burden that would be put on the working capacity of ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... to relate a thing afresh, he would interpolate new matter, or alter it so that it was impossible to recognise it. Once upon a time, one of those gentlemen who, like the usurers at our yearly fairs, clutch and beg and steal every sort of frippery, and issue mean little volumes, no thicker than an A B C book, every month, or even every week, wormed this same story out of Thoma Grigorovitch, and the latter completely forgot about it. But that same young gentleman, in the ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... of his triumph arose the shadow of this strange, unnatural love; for it seemed unnatural to him that his only child should have given her heart to one whose ambition it was to destroy that which he had helped to establish and bring back the frippery of an unhallowed past. He had found it difficult at first to conceive it as possible, but her confession, and more eloquently still her pallid cheeks, left no room to question the truth of this misfortune. And to-morrow he would be called upon to ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.



Words linked to "Frippery" :   frivolity, small beer, triviality, fluff



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com