petticoatery

Blend of petticoat +‎ coterie

petticoatery (plural petticoateries)

1. (archaic) A coterie of women or girls.
   • 1840, Theodore Edward Hook, Fashionable fictions, page 23:

     To do at least the first, it was resolved that we should visit the worthy gentleman en masse, to give him, the opportunity of exercising his hospitlity upon the present occasion, an acceptance of which, as he had an extremely agreeable wife, and some remarkably pretty cousins, we naturally preferred to the male, matter-of-fact dinner at our ostelry, which, however agreeable per se, sank to mortal dulness by comparison, in our then young minds , with the coterie, or more properly the petticoatery, at the castellated mansion of our presumed host.

   • 1849 June, “Letters to the Rev. Charles Fustian”, in Blackwood's Magazine, volume 65, number 404, page 680:

     Immediately the whole coterie (which, in this instance, is an undiluted petticoatery) assembles for consultation.

   • 1890, Justin McCarthy, Mrs. Campbell Praed, The Rival Princess, page 102:

     Diplomacy kept its eye upon him ; he was never quite out of the calculations of European statecraft, of foreign offices and embassies, and chancelleries and drawing-rooms, and coteries and petticoateries.

   • 1970, Budapress Bulletin - Volume 9, Issues 1-25, page 8:

     In the western countryside again the petticoatery assembles for a feasting of their owd and woe to the man who happens to drop in, or does so for curiosity, upon their cakes and ale:

From petticoat +‎ -ery.

petticoatery (uncountable)

1. Feminine activity and pursuits.
   • 1872 August 3, “Drawing-Room Slang”, in Public Opinion, volume 22, number 567, page 146:

     We have already at different times tried to deserve well of the world by remonstrating against the errors of petticoatery, and against certain freakish “sports” in the rosebud garden of girls.

   • 1969, Foreign Service Journal, page 18:

     Ergo, we are wrong to encourage conformity, busy-work, tea-timing diplomatic petticoatery — wrapping bandages against the last day, as it were — and instead should urge those who can to be themselves.

   • 1983, Doris Ray Adler, Thomas Dekker: A Reference Guide, page 134:

     Praises all aspects of the production of Shoemaker's Holiday and particularly the "sheer words, the native tongue, the life and currency of native speech, this roaring, singing thing that was to die out on the English stage, out of most English writing, indeed, was to be emasculated in puritanism, and later smothered in petticoatery, Teutonics and parsons, not to mention middle-class dullness."