frippery
/ˈfɹɪpəɹi/
"frippery" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“frippery” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 8
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Ostentation, as in fancy clothing.
Corpus desk
Index EN-frippery · frippery · English
frippery · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "F" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | frippery |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈfɹɪpəɹi/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “frippery” in English
Rare enough to double-check
frippery is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈfɹɪpəɹi/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 6 senses are on record.
No generated misspelling entries exist for frippery in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From French friperie, from Old French fripier (“to rub up and down, to wear into rags”). Compare fripper. The correct English form is frippery, spelled F-R-I-P-P-E-R-Y.
Definition
- 1Ostentation, as in fancy clothing.
- 2Useless things; trifles.
- 3Cast-off clothes.
- 4The trade or traffic in old clothes.
- 5The place where old clothes are sold.
- 6Hence: secondhand finery; cheap and tawdry decoration; affected elegance.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how frippery appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Young women of such birth, living in a quiet country-house, and attending a village church hardly larger than a parlor, naturally regarded frippery as the ambition of a huckster’s daughter.
Well, we were probably never going to mistake Gordon Brown for a rococo dandy. Out go Thomas Gainsborough and George Romney with all their 18th century frills and fripperies, like aristocrats deported on the tumbril.
Etymology
From French friperie, from Old French fripier (“to rub up and down, to wear into rags”). Compare fripper.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.