Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use frill in a sentence

22 example sentences · noun, verb

Frill means a strip of pleated fabric or paper used as decoration or trim. Example: “One common ceratopsian feature is a frill extending from the back of the skull.”

Examples of frill by meaning

nounA substance or material on the edge of something, resembling such a strip of fabric.

  • She had noticed yesterday that a few tiny corkscrew tendrils had come right through some cracks in the scullery ceiling and all the windows of the lean-to had a thick frill of ruffled green.1918 June, Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “Prelude”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company...

nounSomething extraneous or not essential; something purely for show or effect; a luxury.

  • I’m a regular no-nonsense man with no fancy frills about me.1922, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, “A Matter of Æsthetics”, in The Beautiful and Damned, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC...
  • The company had no money to spare on "frills."1956 September, 'Precursor', “The Dursley & Midland Junction Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 599
  • As if it was trivial for us, a frill, a whim.1985, Margaret Atwood, “Jezebel’s”, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and Stewart, →ISBN, part 12, page 237

nounThe relatively extensive margin seen on the back of the heads of reptiles, with either a bony support or a...

  • She reminded Bojan of a desert lizard throwing up its frill to frighten predators.1997, Richard Flanagan, chapter 54, in The Sound of One Hand Clapping, New York: Grove Press

More sentences with frill

  • One common ceratopsian feature is a frill extending from the back of the skull.From the entry ceratopsian
  • Femceldom represents a sort of self-constructed exile, a dark, rotting core beneath the soft frills of hyperfemininity.2024, Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn, “The return of the femcel”, in The Griffith Review. From the entry hyperfemininity
  • Volkswagen avoided the fins and other frills with which U.S. manufacturers larded their vehicles.2023 January 18, Sam Roberts, “Carl Hahn Dies at 96; Made the VW Beetle Ubiquitous”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York…. From the entry lard
  • Frills of seaweed carry the heat of tobanjan, the spicy Japanese bean paste.2015 June 23, Pete Wells, “Restaurant Reviews: Noreetuh and the Eddy in the East Village”, in New York Times. From the entry tobanjan
  • "Medium" income allows a household a life of no physical deprivation but relatively few frills.1991, Abu Abdullah, Modernisation at Bay: Structure and Change in Bangladesh (BIDS studies in development), University Press, →ISBN…. From the entry Banglaphile
  • Junior Katie Wilson displays a typical soft girl aesthetic look with jewelry, a pleated skirt and frilled socks.2021 April 28, “Dressed to express: The reasoning behind student fashion choices”, in The Charger Account, volume S, number 5, San Jose…. From the entry soft girl
  • Project Cycle Management with its methodological frills had now become another jargon-studded pseudo-discipline which could only be mastered after extensive training.2007, H. J. W. Mutsaers, Peasants, Farmers and Scientists: A Chronicle of Tropical Agricultural Science in the Twentieth Century, page 350. From the entry pseudo-discipline
  • Out go Thomas Gainsborough and George Romney with all their 18th century frills and fripperies, like aristocrats deported on the tumbril.1999 July 21, Jonathan Jones, “Grey and grimy alternative to frippery that bespeaks loyalty to welfare state Britain”, in The Guardian. From the entry frippery
  • He steps through tackles and offloads there are no frills.1999, Irish Independent, Bell rings warning over Leslie. From the entry jinky
  • Have I got trails of gunge on these frills?1978, A. S. Byatt, The Virgin in The Garden, Vintage International, published 1992, page 390. From the entry gunge
  • The old man heaved himself from the chair, seized Jessamy by her pinafore frill and marched her to the house.1967, Barbara Sleigh, Jessamy, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, published 1993, →ISBN, page 84. From the entry march
  • He doesn’t put on frills, or have an office in a fashionable location, or drive around in an expensive automobile.1956, Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night, New Haven: Yale University Press, published 2001, act 1, page 31. From the entry put on frills
  • "But we want to cut out the frills and superfluities.1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html)…. From the entry marriage ring
  • Those dresses are good, sensible, serviceable dresses, without any frills or furbelows about them, and they’re all you’ll get this summer.1908 June, L[ucy] M[aud] Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, Boston, Mass.: L[ouis] C[oues] Page & Company, →OCLC. From the entry furbelow
  • The style is generally New Yorkesque or Wisconsinesque, but every commission dressmaker adds a few frills here and leaves a few off there.1912 December 14, J. H. Pardee, “THE TENDENCY OF THE TIMES”, in Electric Railway Journal, volume 40, number 23, page 1195. From the entry Wisconsinesque
  • She was dressed in the sweetest dress of pale-pink organdy, with dozens of frills and elbow sleeves, and she looked just like a seraph.1908 June, L[ucy] M[aud] Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, Boston, Mass.: L[ouis] C[oues] Page & Company, →OCLC. From the entry seraph
  • Meiolaniids are a peculiar group of extinct turtles bearing cranial horns and frills, caudal rings, and tail clubs and restricted to South America (Eocene) and Australasia (Oligocene to Holocene).2014, Marcelo de la Fuente, Juliana Sterli, Ignacio Maniel, Origin, Evolution and Biogeographic History of South American Turtles, page 134. From the entry meiolaniid

Meaning of frill

  1. noun A strip of pleated fabric or paper used as decoration or trim.
  2. noun A substance or material on the edge of something, resembling such a strip of fabric.
  3. noun A wrinkled edge to a film.

Full definition of frill

Questions about frill in a sentence

How do you use frill in a sentence?
Frill is used as a noun and verb. For example: “One common ceratopsian feature is a frill extending from the back of the skull.”
What is a short sentence with frill?
“Have I got trails of gunge on these frills?”
What does frill mean?
Frill means a strip of pleated fabric or paper used as decoration or trim.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: frill (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use frill in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/frill. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.