Beware the False Lure of Frippery

Hello,

It may not be used as often as it was but describing something as a frippery is still an excellent way of saying it’s foolish and unimportant, a mere frill rather than something serious and of substance. But what exactly is a frippery and how did it enter the English language?

Frippery has different definitions depending on which source you check, and context.

“Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable” tells me it is rubbish of a tawdry character, worthless finery, foolish levity. If you’re curious about tawdry you’ll find the full story of this eponymous word in my book “How to Get Your Name in the Dictionary”. The Cambridge Dictionary says it’s “silly decoration or other unnecessary object” and Merriam-Webster opts instead for “cast-off clothes”.

All of these definitions are correct. Frippery, like so many other words, has multiple meanings. The cast-off clothes sets us on the right track to its origins, however.

This Fool is in all her frippery

Frippery entered English in the mid 1500s as a word for old clothes and it was borrowed from the French word friperie (old clothes or an old clothes shop). Friperie evolved from Old French freperie or feuperie (old rags, old clothes) in the 1200s. Feupe and frepe were words for rags and came from Late Latin faluppa (splinter, straw, fibre). The word frippery thus holds the idea of clothes were are so worn down that they are rags, torn into fibres (or fibers for American readers).

Brewer adds that a friperer was a dealer in old clothes and a frippery could also be a shop where odds and ends and old clothes were bought and sold. Hence frippery could be old clothes or the business of trading them.

It’s unknown exactly how frippery moved from describing old clothes to fine clothes with a subtext of “over the top” showiness, but humans do like to turn a word’s meaning on its head and sarcasm is not a modern invention. We do know when it happened. Frippery has been used to mock tawdry outfits since the early 1600s.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)