furbelow.

1. A gathered or pleated strip of material used as an ornamental ruffle on clothing.

2. A showy decorative addition or elaboration regarded as unnecessary rather than essential.

3. To decorate a garment with ruffles or add similarly elaborate ornament to something.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• a lace furbelow
• skirt furbelows
• ribbons and furbelows

On the page

A lace furbelow trembled at the hem of her skirt.

The costume maker replaced the torn furbelows before the rehearsal.

Usage notes

Primary category: literary / elevated prose. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: Noun singular furbelow; plural furbelows. Mass use where indicated by sense. Verb: furbelow; furbelows; furbelowed; furbelowed; furbelowing. Commonness: rare (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: MW directly read noun gathered/pleated material, especially a clothing flounce; showy/superfluous thing likened to a ruffle; transitive verb listed. Collins slower load after fast timeout explicitly read verb decorate with or as with furbelows, or put ornamental trimming on a garment. Three useful noun/verb senses retained. 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: precise costume ornament, figurative ornamental flourishes. Third-person singular: furbelows.