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fancy fair. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Etymology
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Noun
fancy fair (plural fancy fairs)
- (historical) A fair at which articles of fancy and ornament are sold, generally for some charitable purpose.
1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XXXVII, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. , volume II, London: Henry Colburn, , →OCLC, page 168:"A fancy fair is a new kind of charity, my lord; or, strictly speaking, a new mode of dispensing it, by employing the wits and fingers of our wives and daughters in making all sorts of fidfads, which turns your house into a Babel, sends your servants to Ackermann's, or the haberdasher's, ten times a day for coloured paper and pasteboard, fancy edgings and colour-boxes, ribbon and velvet, silver edging, beads and braid, card-racks and hand-screens, dolls' heads and purse-clasps—in short, things without end, as I know to my sorrow."