frippery

From French friperie. From Old French fripier (“to rub up and down, to wear into rags”). Compare fripper.

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frippery (countable and uncountable, plural fripperies)

1. Ostentation, as in fancy clothing.
2. Useless things; trifles.
   • 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 Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 170:

     [Olmsted reiterated his insistence that in Chicago] simplicity and reserve will be practiced and petty effects and frippery avoided.

   • 2014 October 21, Oliver Brown, “Oscar Pistorius jailed for five years – sport afforded no protection against his tragic fallibilities: Bladerunner's punishment for killing Reeva Steenkamp is but a frippery when set against the burden that her bereft parents, June and Barry, must carry [print version: No room for sentimentality in this tragedy, 13 September 2014, p. S22]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Sport)‎:

     [Oscar] Pistorius's punishment for killing her [Reeva Steenkamp] that night is but a frippery when set against the burden that her bereft parents, June and Barry, must carry.

3. (obsolete) Cast-off clothes.
   • 1598, Ben Jonson, Every Man in His Humour‎:

     Yet, if thou dost, come over, and but see our frippery; change an old shirt for a whole smock with us...

4. (obsolete) The trade or traffic in old clothes.
5. (obsolete) The place where old clothes are sold.
   • 1610, The Tempest, by Shakespeare, act 4 scene 1

     O, ho, monster! we know what belongs to a frippery.

6. Hence: secondhand finery; cheap and tawdry decoration; affected elegance.
   • Oliver Goldsmith

     fond of gauze and French frippery

   • Sir Walter Scott

     the gauzy frippery of a French translation

• 1897 Universal Dictionary of the English Language, Robert Hunter and Charles Morris, eds., v 2 p 2213. [for entries 2, 3, 4, & 5]: Frippery (Page: 597)