Frippery

My obsession with archaic words continues unabated, and today it manifests itself in another word of condescension. If one were to assume you, as an individual, were a head of a business in these trying economic times, you might be looking for a way to lighten the financial burden of running your occupation. Before your assembled board, you would declare:"Gentlemen and Ladies, we must rid our company of whatever pointless frippery we can!"

According to the AHD, frippery can be defined as pretentious, showy elegance. However, I am most familiar with the definition of "something trivial or nonessential". After all, there is no better put-down in the world than to decry another's belongings, or even their morals, as frippery! However, to find its roots, we must delve to the last language that bared it, that of the most foul and foreign French.

According to the AHD, we get Frippery from the French word friperie, which likewise comes from the Old French freperie, meaning "old clothes". Freperie, however, in turn comes from the Old French felpe and frepe, which share a root in the Medieval Latin word faluppa, meaning a worthless material.

The story for this one is quite simple: The very root of the word has the meaning we desire. As it passed through French, likely that is where it gained the connotation of being pretentious, as it was associated with old clothes. And, in all honesty, how else would any self-respecting generation classify the styles of those who went before them than as pretentious, especially considering the French Aristocracy?