Today’s Words That Work: Frippery

Frippery (FRIP-uh-ree) — from the French for “rag” — is gaudy or ostentatious clothing or adornments.

Example (as used by the 19th century American journalist William Cowper Brann, “Brann the Iconoclast,” in one of many statements critical of the New York social scene): “Half a million dollars gone up in frippery and flowers, and the bedizened gang didn’t get half the fun out of it that a party of country yaps will extract from a candy-pulling or a husking-bee.”