frilly
/ˈfɹɪli/adjective
frilly is an adjective meaning “Having frills; frilled” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-R-I-L-L-Y and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 3 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does frilly mean?
adjective
- 1
Having frills; frilled.
- 2
Over-elaborate or showy in character or appearance.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce frilly?
- /ˈfɹɪli/
Frilly has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-frilly.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of frilly
- frillier comparative
- frilliest superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is frilly?
Frilly appears about once in every 3 million words in written English, the 52,337th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Frilly in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense having frills:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does frilly come from?
From frill + -y.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).