fripperies

Noun

frippery (countable and uncountable, plural fripperies)

1. Ostentation, as in fancy clothing.
   • 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.1871, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter I, in Middlemarch […], volume I, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book I
2. Useless things; trifles.
   • [Olmsted reiterated his insistence that in Chicago] simplicity and reserve will be practiced and petty effects and frippery avoided.1892 April, Frederick Law Olmsted, Report by F.L.O., quoted in 2003, Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, New York, N.Y.: Crown...
3. (obsolete) Cast-off clothes.
   • If thou doſt, come ouer, and but ſee our fripperie: change an olde ſhirt, for a whole ſmocke, with vs.1598, Beniamin Ionson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “Euery Man in His Humour. A Comœdie. […]”, in The Workes of Beniamin Ionson (First Folio), London: […] Will[iam] Stansby, published 1616, →OCLC, Act I, scene...
4. (obsolete) The trade or traffic in old clothes.
5. (obsolete) The place where old clothes are sold.
   • Oh, ho, Monſter: wee know what belongs to a frippery, O King Stephano.1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
6. Hence: secondhand finery; cheap and tawdry decoration; affected elegance.
   • 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.1773, [Oliver] Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer: Or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. […], London: […] F[rancis] Newbery, […], →OCLC, Act I, page 5