• frippery •
Pronunciation: frip-êr-ee • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. Pretentious, showy finery; ostentation itself. 2. Something petty, insignificant, a triviality.
Notes: Today's Good Word is almost an oxymoron: today it refers to elegant, even overelegant clothing, but we know that frippery started out referring to old, worn-out clothing or the shop where such clothing is sold. This is the sense Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote, in The Tempest iv. l, "We know what belongs to a frippery." That meaning, however, hasn't been around for more than a century, having glided into the second meaning above: an insignificant triviality.
In Play: Today's word is still used most frequently in reference to showy clothing: "Maud Lynn Dresser has no taste in clothes, so she is constantly trying to impress her friends by wearing the latest in ready-made frippery." We may also use this word to refer to small, insignificant items collectively: "Maud Lynn's dresser is covered with combs, brushes, face creams, cosmetics, and all the other frippery of a modern day slave to vanity."
Word History: Frippery originally referred to rags of all sorts, to odds and ends. The word comes from French friperie "second-hand clothes and furniture", from fripe "a rag". Frip evolved from Old French frepe "old clothes" via an odd change even for French, from an older form felpe. Felpe was the descendant of Medieval Latin faluppa "rubbish". No one seems to know where faluppa came from. (Today we would like to thank Kenny Williams of Brewer High School in Fort Worth, Texas, for seeing far more than frippery in the word frippery.
FRIPPERY
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I would say that the Starbucks menu item Frappuccino is a bit of frippery. Cappuccino is an Italian word and frappé is French. This guy seems to agree with me about the silliness of Starbucks' terminology.
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- Great Grand Panjandrum
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OMG that's a great article! My sentiments on sizes exactly! He should have offerd the guy a frappe in the mouth. (I also see that his avatar is showing us the hand signal for a Binary 5, since the thumb is extended, too. If the thumb were closed it would be a Binary 4.)I would say that the Starbucks menu item Frappuccino is a bit of frippery. Cappuccinois an Italian word and frappé is French. This guy seems to agree with me about the silliness of Starbucks' terminology.
Frappe, however, is what I'm told they used to call milkshakes in New England. If you asked for a milkshake you got just that: milkthat was shaken up with some ice and maybe some flavoring in it.
I could do with one of the original 1885 milkshakes right about now!
Regards//Larry
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I'm not so sure about the "used to" bit in the difference between a frappe and a milkshake. There is also something called an egg cream, which has no egg in it as I recall.
By the way, frappe in this usage is not accented as in the French. It's pronounced frap.
Well, time for me to frappé la rue.
By the way, frappe in this usage is not accented as in the French. It's pronounced frap.
Well, time for me to frappé la rue.
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.
An egg cream is a drink consisting of chocoalte syrup, seltzer (soda water) and milk. No eggs at all. (Or are there?)
"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once. Lately it hasn't been working."
Anonymous
Anonymous
Alas, poor Starbucks! I knew them, Horatio: barristas
of infinite cool, of most excellent hipness: they have
espressed my mocha a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Espresso Con Panna kissed, I know
not how oft. Where be your spice now? your
lattes? your shots? your flashy, new syrup types,
that were wont to set the counter on a roar? Not one
now, to flaunt your green tea flakes? in a tiazzi?
Now get you to Chamber of Commerce, and tell them, let
us build an inch apart, to this end we must
come. Make us laugh at that.
of infinite cool, of most excellent hipness: they have
espressed my mocha a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Espresso Con Panna kissed, I know
not how oft. Where be your spice now? your
lattes? your shots? your flashy, new syrup types,
that were wont to set the counter on a roar? Not one
now, to flaunt your green tea flakes? in a tiazzi?
Now get you to Chamber of Commerce, and tell them, let
us build an inch apart, to this end we must
come. Make us laugh at that.
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