Forms: 6 freprie, fripperie, (7 thripperie), 7 fripery, 7– frippery. [a. or ad. OF. freperie, ferperie, felperie (Fr. friperie), f. frepe, ferpe, felpe rag.]
In all senses, more or less collective.
† 1. Old clothes; cast-off garments. Obs.
1568. Satir. Poems Reform., xlviii. 74. Thot it be awld, and twenty tymis sawld, Ȝit will the freprie mak ȝow fane With vlis to renew it and mak it weill hewit.
1606. Holland, Sueton., 241, note. Which extendeth also to slaves and old wares or thripperie.
1638. Ford, Fancies, I. iii. Some frippery to hide nakedness.
1700. Congreve, Way of World, III. v. I’ll reduce him to frippery and rags.
1790. Burke, Fr. Rev., Wks. V. 409. An old huge full-bottomed perriwig out of the wardrobe of the antiquated frippery of Louis the Fourteenth.
1824. W. Irving, T. Trav., I. 199. The old garments and frippery that fluttered from every window.
fig. 1638. Sir R. Baker, trans. Letters of Mounsieur de Balzac, To Rdr. (1654), 3. Avoucheth that our Monsieur here, is but a Mountebank, and a Plagiary, that struts in borrowed plumes, and makes a great shew of the frippery and brokage of other Authors.
1742. H. Walpole, Lett. H. Mann (1834), I. xxv. 112. Old Sarah’s Memoirs … are nothing but remnants of old women’s frippery.
2. Finery in dress, esp. tawdry finery; an example of this, an article of fashionable attire. Also, transf. tawdry ornamentation in general.
1637. Sir E. Burke, in Dk. of Rutland’s MSS. (1888), I. 498. Such a cuning peti larceny of fripery as amazes us all.
1681. Crowne, Hen. VI., I. 10. A little Pinke Laden with toyes and fripperies from France.
1773. Goldsm., She Stoops to Conquer, I. By living a year or two in town, she is as fond of gauze, and French frippery, as the best of them.
1833. Ht. Martineau, Manch. Strike, i. 16. I will … send my wife with a cloak … to hide the child’s frippery.
1856. Miss Mulock, J. Halifax, x. With no fripperies or fandangos of any sort.
1864. C. Knight, Passages of a Working Life, I. v. 220. We obtained one of this class of Churches, made to the received pattern, at a preposterous cost for Bath stone and corresponding frippery.
b. Applied to a showily dressed person.
1877. Black, Green Past., iv. (1878), 34. You don’t suppose that this girl is any of the painted fripperies you meet at every woman’s house in London.
c. Articles of small value; trifles.
1803. Jane Porter, Thaddeus, xxiv. (1831), 203. Boxes, baskets, and other frippery.
1831. Trelawny, Adv. Younger Son., III. xxix. 241. Modern frippery of combs, razors, brushes, and linen, which prevents a man from sleeping out of his own house without the incumbrance of the best part of a haberdasher’s shop, I never dreamed of.
d. fig. Empty display, esp. in speech or literary composition; showy talk; ostentation.
1727. Swift, To Yng. Lady, Wks. 1755, II. II. 47. Vou will gather more advantage by listening to them, than from all the nonsense and frippery of your own sex.
1764. Gray, Lett., Wks. 1884, III. 187. I can stay with great patience for anything that comes from Voltaire. They tell me it is frippery, and blasphemy, and wit.
1871. Freeman, Hist. Ess., Ser. I. v. 114. Throwing aside all the fopperies and fripperies of chivalry, we have to balance how we can the good and the evil points of the man who was at once the savage conqueror of Limoges and the patriotic statesman of the Good Parliament.
1877. Mrs. Oliphant, Makers Flor., ix. 237. A noble young gentleman amid all his frippery of courtier and virtuoso.
† 3. A place where cast-off clothes are sold. Obs.
1598. Florio, Recateria, a fripperie or brokers shop.
1610. Shaks., Temp., IV. i. 225. Oh, ho, Monster; wee know what belongs to a frippery, O King Stephano.
a. 1635. Corbet, Poems (1807), 98. For learning, th’ Universitie; And for old clothes, the Frippery.
[1830. James, Darnley, xxix. 128/2. I will get the three dresses this very night, from a frippery in Poole Street.]
fig. 1616. B. Jonson, Epigr., I. lvi. Whose Workes are eene the frippery of wit.
1649. Owen, Serm., Wks. 1851, VIII. 236. Ireland was termed by some in civil things a frippery of bankrupts.
a. 1680. Butler, Rem. (1759), I. 364. A Frippery of common Places of Pulpit Railing, ill put together.
† 4. A stand or horse for dresses, etc.; a wardrobe. Obs.
a. 1616. [see FLIPPERY: Dyce prints frippery].
1632. Massinger, City Madam, I. i. He shews like a walking frippery.
c. 1645. Sir R. Verney, Inv. Claydon, in Lady Verney, Mem. Verney Fam., I. 6. The little and greate Fripperies, etc.
† 6. Trade or traffic in cast-off clothes. Obs.
1599. E. Sandys, Europæ Speculum (1632), 131. The Iewes (who haue generally not any other trades than friperie and usurie, loane of money and old stuffe,) are inhibited in many places the medling any more with bookes, for feare least through errour or desire of lucre they might do them praejudice.
1606. Chapman, Mons. D’Olive, III. i. D’Ol. Now your profession, I pray? Frip. Fripperie, my Lord, or as some tearme it, Petty Brokery.
6. Tawdry style; frivolity. rare.
1802. Mad. D’Arblay, Diary, 5 May. His manly air carried off the frippery of his trappings.
1855. Chamier, My Travels, I. xviii. 310. The frippery of fashion might not have caused a Roman to strut about with an eye-glass.
7. attrib. and Comb.
c. 1645. Howell, Lett., VI. 24. Yet by that base and servile way of Frippery trade, they grow rich.
1744. Ess. Acting, 18. Macbeth’s … Night Gown … ought to be a Red Damask, and not the frippery-flowered one of a Foppington.
Hence Fripperied over, pa. pple., showily tricked out.
1858. Miss Mulock, Thoughts Women, 323. Flimsy, light-coloured dresses, fripperied over with trimmings.
