'It Is the Human Glory which Antecedes All Others'

It’s a word that sounds like what it means, or at least one of the things it means: frippery. Before I looked it up, I assumed it meant triviality, a thing or act of little consequence. That’s almost right. I encountered the word in Jonathan Swift’s “A Letter to a Very Young Lady on Her Marriage”:

“If you are in company with men of learning, though they happen to discourse of arts and sciences out of your compass, yet you will gather more advantage by listening to them, than from all the nonsense and frippery of your own sex . . . .”

Swift’s point is debatable but you can understand my impression of frippery. The OED outlines a splendid history of the word. It starts in France, of course, and beginning in the sixteenth century the word in English means “old clothes; cast-off garments.”  This mutates into “finery in dress, esp. tawdry finery.” That sounds like “shabby-genteel,” a quality I find admirable, like any attempt to honestly bolster one’s sagging self-respect. By the nineteenth century, frippery could be applied to “a showily-dressed person” or “articles of small value; trifles.” Swift’s usage is closest to this meaning: “empty display, esp. in speech or literary composition; showy talk; ostentation.” That’s pretty much what I had in mind. In modern demotic American English, bullshit.

English is remarkable in the way it takes a word and clones it promiscuously. Here are subsequent usages: “a place where cast-off clothes are sold,” “a stand or horse for dresses, etc.; a wardrobe,” “trade or traffic in cast-off clothes,” “tawdry style; frivolity.” The Dictionary’s final entry is an adjective, “fripperied over,” meaning “showily tricked out.”

English gives us enormous freedom of expression, while demanding that we treat it with respect. We can articulate almost anything, if we work at it. How exhilarating it is to play with words while communicating with others. It’s almost like making music. Anthony Burgess, a composer and great lexical performer, writes in Language Made Plain (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1965):    

“[L]anguage survives everything—corruption, misuse, ignorance, ineptitude. Linking man to man in the dark, it brought man out of the dark. It is the human glory which antecedes all others. It merits not only our homage but our constant and intelligent study.”