frippery.

1. Showy clothing or decorative dress valued mainly for its appearance rather than practical usefulness.

2. Decorative or frivolous extras that add display without contributing much practical value.

3. Ostentatious or affected elegance that seems foolish, excessive, or lacking in substance.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• fashionable frippery
• dressed in frippery
• ribbons and frippery

On the page

She abandoned the court's frippery for a plain wool coat.

The trunk contained silk gloves, ribbons, and other fripperies.

Usage notes

Primary category: literary / elevated prose. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: Usually uncountable for finery or ostentation. Countable singular frippery; plural fripperies for showy articles or extras. Commonness: uncommon (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: Direct dictionary reading: finery/showy garments; showy frivolous nonessential things; ostentation/affected elegance. Archaic cast-off clothing and old-clothes store uses also appear. Three modern scopes retained and historical overflow flagged; no invented adjective. Individual usefulness checked for a precise literary, narrative, dialogue or critical function. Definitions and examples are original; commonness is an editorial estimate. Mood and intensity apply only to inherent qualities of the specific sense. Writing functions: showy dress or decorative extras, outward elegance without useful substance.