different between brilliance vs frippery

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: br?ly?ns
• IPA^(key): /?b??lj?n(t)s/

Etymology

Borrowed from French brillance.

Noun

brilliance (usually uncountable, plural brilliances)

1. The quality of being exceptionally effulgent (giving off light).
2. The quality of having extraordinary mental capacity.
3. (chiefly Britain) Magnificence; resplendence.

Derived terms

• brilliancy

Related terms

• brilliant
• brilliantly
• brilliantness
• beryl (possibly)
• beryllium (possibly)

Translations

English

Etymology

From French friperie, from Old French fripier (“to rub up and down, to wear into rags”). Compare fripper.

Pronunciation

Noun

frippery (countable and uncountable, plural fripperies)

1. Ostentation, as in fancy clothing.
2. Useless things; trifles.
   • 1892 April, Frederick Law Olmsted, Report by F.L.O., quoted in 2003, Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, New York, N.Y.: Crown Publishing Group, ?ISBN, page 170:

     [Olmsted reiterated his insistence that in Chicago] simplicity and reserve will be practiced and petty effects and frippery avoided.
3. (obsolete) Cast-off clothes.
4. (obsolete) The trade or traffic in old clothes.
5. (obsolete) The place where old clothes are sold.
   • 1610, The Tempest, by Shakespeare, act 4 scene 1

     O, ho, monster! we know what belongs to a frippery.

6. Hence: secondhand finery; cheap and tawdry decoration; affected elegance.

   • fond of gauze and French frippery

   • the gauzy frippery of a French translation

Translations

References

• 1897 Universal Dictionary of the English Language, Robert Hunter and Charles Morris, eds., v 2 p 2213. [for entries 2, 3, 4, & 5]: Frippery (Page: 597)