foppery

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English

Etymology

From fop +‎ -ery.

Noun

foppery (countable and uncountable, plural fopperies)

  1. The dress or actions of a fop.
    • 1902, G.K. Chesterton, Twelve Types:
      And it is by their fopperies and their frivolities that we know that their sinister philosophy is sincere; in their lights and garlands and ribbons we read their indwelling despair.
  2. Stupidity.
    • c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , lines 118–122:
      This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, / when we are sick in fortune,–often the surfeit / of our own behavior,–we make guilty of our / disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as / if we were villains by necessity; fools by / heavenly compulsion []
    • 1783, William Godwin, Four Early Pamphlets:
      The energies of his mind led him to despise the fopperies of idolatry; and he found the Christians, in the most unfavourable situation, torn into innumerable parties, by the sectaries of Athanasius, Arius, Eutyches, Nestorius.
    • 1867, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Poems:
      Still, still the secret presses;
      The nearing clouds draw down;
      The crimson morning flames into
      The fopperies of the town.

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