different between frippery vs fickleness

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)

English

Etymology

From Middle English fikelnesse, equivalent to fickle +? -ness.

Noun

fickleness (countable and uncountable, plural ficklenesses)

1. The quality of being fickle.

Translations