finery
1 Americannoun
noun
-
fineries
plural
noun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of finery1
First recorded in 1670–80; fine 1 + -ery
Origin of finery2
1600–10; < Middle French finerie, equivalent to fin ( er ) to refine ( see fine 1) + erie -ery
Explanation
Finery is fancy and expensive clothing and jewelry. A lot of high school students look forward to the prom as a chance to dress up in their finery. Your fanciest clothes are finery, especially if they're elaborate or pricey. Many people dress in finery to attend formal weddings, wearing long gowns and well-tailored tuxedos. The fancy shoes, hats, necklaces, and ties are all also considered to be finery. The word came into use around 1670, literally meaning "something that is fine," from the "high quality" meaning of fine.
Vocabulary lists containing finery
Beowulf
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Tolkien Reading Day, List 9
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Crossing the Wire
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The focal point of Ashenda festival, which traditionally draws thousands of young women dressed in their finery, was to be a mass gathering at a stadium in Mekelle on Saturday.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026
Amanda Gladu’s handsome costumes underlined the contrast between Blanche’s finery and the everyday wear of the other characters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 15, 2026
There should be no single, all-powerful character around which a democracy revolves, so it is considered unseemly to lavish excessive finery on the head of state.
From Slate ● Jun. 11, 2026
With the glamorous catwalks, celebrities and excess of finery on display, the possibility of the recent investigations uncovering labour abuses being on anyone's mind appeared slim.
From Barron's ● Feb. 27, 2026
Plutarch means hundreds of people dressed in finery at a three-day celebration.
From "Mockingjay" by Suzanne Collins
While most festivalgoers don the likes of velvet, bodices, feathered caps and other fineries, Matthews and his friends coordinated peasant-inspired costumes in an effort to represent the everyman.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 23, 2022
The burial site, and particularly the crown and other fineries interred with the woman, hinted at a premodern European culture in which women might have held considerable power.
From New York Times ● Nov. 17, 2021
A cathedral can endure the loss of its stained glass and other fineries, as has happened in Britain where all our cathedrals were vandalised in the Reformation and civil war.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 16, 2019
Beyond the constant dialectic between streetwear and ladylike fineries - the sweatshirts and pencil skirts were worn together - the collection was also playing with opacity and transparency.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 7, 2011
Here are you all got together at this vendue of fineries knick-knacks.
From One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed by C. A. Bogardus
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
