frippery
Americannoun
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fripperies
plural
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finery in dress, especially when showy, gaudy, or the like.
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empty display; ostentation.
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gewgaws; trifles.
noun
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ornate or showy clothing or adornment
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showiness; ostentation
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unimportant considerations; trifles; trivia
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of frippery
1560–70; < French friperie, Old French freperie, equivalent to frepe rag + -erie -ery
Explanation
Frippery is something showy but trivial. You might think you need a feather boa, but your sister might say it’s just frippery. Frippery comes from the French word friperie for "old clothes,” and originally, frippery referred to old, trashy and maybe even tawdry clothes. From there, the word spread to include other kinds of things that aren't worth much. Often, frippery refers to nonsense, or language that is empty and just a lot of hot air. Use this word when you want to say something is showy but ultimately empty of value.
Vocabulary lists containing frippery
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
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"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Anne Porter
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The Devil in the White City
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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:
Brushing ahead all that geeky frippery, though, and what’s plainest about that scene is how unsettling it is.
From Salon ● Jan. 18, 2025
Like even the lousiest Regency-era frippery, it has its intermittent pleasures, most of them visual.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2022
On the one hand: the stuff of fantasy and frippery; on the other, feeds and headlines filled with threat and fear.
From New York Times ● Feb. 25, 2022
Gewgaw, a shiny trinket Bon Voyage A trinket or a knickknack, an ornament, a kickshaw, a frippery, a gimcrack, a bibelot, a gewgaw .
From Washington Post ● Aug. 12, 2021
He reiterated his insistence that in Chicago “simplicity and reserve will be practiced and petty effects and frippery avoided.”
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
That’s what the fashion historian James Laver named the period during and immediately following the French Revolution, which made wearing aristocratic fripperies both dangerous and passé.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 28, 2025
“Goon Squad” employed a number of narrative fripperies.
From New York Times ● Mar. 29, 2022
It's been a long time since I've addressed friends and dinner parties and crystal fripperies in some other context than their abrupt cancellation.
From Washington Post ● May 16, 2021
It is not at all good, but the crucial distinction to make is that its aggressive un-goodness strikes a different timbre than the comparable un-goodness of Franco’s highfalutin literary adaptations or experimental fripperies.
From Slate ● Jun. 6, 2018
“And we could reserve space to sell paintings, and combs, and fripperies from France.”
From "Fever 1793" by Laurie Halse Anderson
Definitions 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.
