different between levity vs frippery

English

Etymology

Coined in 1564, from Latin levit?s (“lightness, frivolity”), from levis (“lightness (in weight)”). Cognate to lever, and more distantly, light.

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /?l?.v?.ti/

Noun

levity (usually uncountable, plural levities)

1. Lightness of manner or speech, frivolity; lack of appropriate seriousness; inclination to make a joke of serious matters.
2. (obsolete) Lack of steadiness.
3. The state or quality of being light, buoyancy.

   • Most of the confidences were unsought - frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation or a hostile levity […]

   • 1838, Robert Montgomery Bird, Peter Pilgrim

     […] it would really seem as if there was something nomadic in our natures, a principle of levity and restlessness […]

   • 1869, Mary Somerville, On Molecular and Microscopic Science 1.1.12:

     Hydrogen […] rises in the air on account of its levity.

4. (countable) A lighthearted or frivolous act.

Antonyms

• gravity

Derived terms

• levitous

Translations

References

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)