Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Frills   Listen
noun
frills  n.  Ornamental objects of no great value.
Synonyms: falderal, folderol, gimcrackery, gimcracks, nonsense, trumpery.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Frills" Quotes from Famous Books



... peculiar shades of blue, so arranged that patches of light and dark distracted the eye. The upper skirt was tied so lightly back that it was impossible to take a long step, and the under one was so loaded with plaited frills that it "wobbled" no other word will express it ungracefully, both fore and aft. A bunch of folds was gathered up just below the waist behind, and a great bow rode a-top. A small jacket of the same material was adorned with ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... coach," said Cowan, "and a nice chap when you get to know him; no frills on him, you know. And he's plumb full of pluck. They say that once when he played here at half-back he got the ball on Robinson's forty yards and walked down the field and over the line for a touch-down ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour

... so forcibly and so many times that Mary, after going to the head of the kitchen stairs to call Lizzie, with no result, finally ran down the main stairway herself, and gathering the loose frills of her morning wrapper about her, ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... yarn, sure, an' seein' we was your hands, an' his yarn was to do with your stock, he handed it to us with frills. He'd just got in from the hills, wher' he'd been trailin'. He said he'd run into Jim Thorpe's stock, tucked away in as nice a hollow of sweet grass as you'd find this side of Kentucky. Wal, he hadn't no suspicion, seein' whose beasties they were, an' he was for makin' back. He'd started, ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... of Ferdinand! How does she ever open it? What ages of life slip by as she unfolds it! Women know this by experience! As to men, when they are in such maddening passes, they murder their shirt-frills. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... prayer; and if ye'll bring me the little Bible ye'll find in my jacket-pocket I'll say the burial service of the Church of England over ye two, fine as a bishop would and good enough for anybody, with all the frills. How's ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... suddenly and forms a pocket, which is generally particularly well developed in birds who feed on grain; this is called the crop in English, in French jabot; whence comes the application of that word to those full shirt-frills which have sometimes been the fashion. It is the pigeon's crop that gives him the rounded chest over which he bridles so prettily. The crop is a receptacle where the food makes a halt: it is something between the pouch of the monkey and the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... questioned this. Is the emotion always precisely the same? Is it true to say that the human heart remains quite unchanged beneath all the changing fashions of frills and ruffles? In this elegant and cruel Sentiment, I rather fancy that colour and shape do make a difference. I have a notion that about 1840 was the Zenith, the Meridian Hour, the Golden Age of the Passion. Those tight-waisted, whiskered ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... charmingly equipped in a bottle-green cassimere habit, a small hat with a green veil, buckskin gloves, and velvet boots which met the lace frills of her drawers, and mounted on an elegantly caparisoned little horse, was exhibiting to her father and the Duc d'Herouville the beautiful present she had just received; she was evidently delighted with an attention of a kind that particularly ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... to dress; the holey stockings were replaced by others that had seen less service; the worn frills and laces were changed for others less threadbare. This done, Hermione, with many supple twists, wriggled dexterously into her best dress, pausing now and then to sigh mournfully and grieve over its many deficiencies and shortcomings, defects which only feminine eyes, so coldly critical, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... retraced his steps and presented himself on the piazza. His shoes and stockings were covered with mud; the frills on his shirt were torn and ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... I will go to Finistere, there's nothing that can hold me back. I'll laugh with Yves and Leon, and I'll chaff with Rose and Jeanne; I'll seek the little, quaint buvette that's kept by Mother Merdrinac Who wears a cap of many frills, and swears just like a man. I'll yarn with hearty, hairy chaps who dance and leap and crack their heels; Who swallow cupfuls of cognac and never turn a hair; I'll watch the nut-brown boats come in with mullet, plaice and conger eels, The jeweled ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... as many of his men friends as she can accommodate, and provides a good, substantial meal, without any "frills." It need not be elaborate if everything is good of its kind, well cooked and served hot. The menu may include oysters, roast fowl, two vegetables, several relishes, and an entree, with some simple dessert and good coffee. She will also see to it that the cigars are of the proper excellence. It ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... through the window; but Swan lighted a lantern that hung on a nail behind the door, carried it across the neat little room, and set it down on the floor beside the usual pioneer cupboard made simply of clean boxes nailed bottom against the wall. Swan had furnished a few extra frills to his cupboard, for the ends of the boxes were fastened to hewn slabs standing upright and just clearing the floor. Near the upper shelf a row of nails held Swan's coffee cups,—four of them, thick and white, such ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower

... yonder. I ain't got much in my larder today, but what there is will fill a mighty big vacuum in my interior, let me tell you. This here is coffee in the first can—-mebbe not just what you boys is accustomed to at your breakfast tables, but good enough for me when it's piping hot. I don't take any frills with wine either, in the way of cream and sugar, leaving all that for those that sit at white tablecloths and have silver as well as china dishes. In this other can I've got some soup. Never mind where I got it; some ladies, bless their hearts, are pretty kind; and I ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson

... morning? Don't turn your back And scuttle into your shop like a rabbit to its hole. I've just been taking a stroll. The stinking Cossacks are bivouacked all up and down the Champs Elysees. I can't get the smell of them out of my nostrils. Dirty fellows, who don't believe in frills Like washing. Ah, mon vieux, you'd have to go Out of business if you lived in Russia. So! We've given up being perfumers to the Emperor, have we? Blaise, Be careful of the hen, Maybe I can find a use for her one of these days. That eagle's rather well cut, Martin. ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... world, entirely beneath the notice of a rational being; but now she was in a very different atmosphere; and at nine o'clock of a summer morning was attired in a very becoming pink wrapper, finished with the whitest of frills; and sat at her window, a young lady of elegant leisure, waiting for the breakfast-bell. Of course she could read a chapter in the Bible now, and should enjoy it quite as much as Abbie did. She had never learned that happy little habit of having a much-used, much-worn, much-loved ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)

... jaunty lump of a parlor-maid in a fluster at the sight of so much grandeur says "At home" (some of them have "days"), and we are ushered into a narrow hall and so to a drawing-room. They seem always to be papered with buff-and-mustard papers and to have "pongee" sofa-cushions with frills. There is often tennis going on on the neat lawn beyond, and we see visions of large, pink-faced girls and callow youths taking exercise. The hostess gushes at us: "Dear Mrs. Gurrage, so good of you to come—and this is Mrs. Gussie?" (Yes, I am called Mrs. Gussie, Oh! grandmamma, do you hear?) ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... view to utility and strength rather than ornamentation. No attempt had been made to render the place attractive and in this Gentleman Geoff's psychology was sound; Limasito wanted its play, like its liquor, without frills. ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... portrait shows her, very young-looking in spite of her stateliness, enhanced though it is by the high turban of embroidered muslin edged with soft lace falling over the clusters of fair curls on her temples, and by the black satin gown, short-waisted and scanty, relieved only by delicate lace frills, which shade the beautiful throat and the strong, white, shapely hands. The shadow on her face as she gazes into the fire is not marvelous, for it is winter in her quiet Connecticut home; the post comes but twice a week; her husband is representing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... trimmings apparently decrease the height, and that vertical lines add to it, those who desire to appear at their best will use discernment in dividing their basques with yokes, or corsage mountings at the bust-line or frills at ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley

... Elizabeth's time the Arum was known as starch-wort because the roots were then used for supplying pure white starch to stiffen the ruffs and frills worn at that time by gallants and ladies. This was obtained by boiling or baking the roots, and thus dispelling their acridity. When dried and powdered the root constitutes the French cosmetic, "Cypress Powder." Recently ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... before the fire. Although it was early spring the mornings were chilly, and a cheerful fire burned in the grate, throwing a bright, glowing radiance over the room and over the exquisite morning toilet of white cashmere, with its white lace frills, relieved here and there with coquettish dashes of scarlet blossoms, which Pluma wore, setting off her graceful ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey

... drinker, fast liver, and the owner of an attenuated conscience. Servius Flaccus, the second, was of a different type. He was languid; spirited only when he railed at a slave who brushed against his immaculate toga. The frills on his robes made him almost feminine; and he spoke, even in invective, in a soft, lisping voice. Around him floated the aroma of countless rare unguents, that made his coming known afar off. His only ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... this exacting test and the knowledge that he had perfected the major part of his aerial fire-extinguisher—the chemical combination—Tom Swift was now able to devote his attention to the "frills" as Ned called them. That is, he could work out a scheme for attaching a searchlight to his airship and make better arrangements for a one-man control in releasing the chemical containers into the heart of a ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton

... easily than letters. We then talked to each other, agreeing upon the maxims of simplicity and directness which are at the root of all mercantile stability. He told me he required cash from all who bought his chairs; that there was no agreement, no insurance—no "frills," as he ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... away. The people to whom it was directed would feel ashamed of what thrill was left in it after it had reached them through the only possible medium. This is the age—in this country—of hard practical sense without any frills, or thrills. It is true that there is a certain amount of sham oratory surviving in the Senate, but the very fact that it is sham protects it from the press. The real thing would irritate and alarm the spirits of mediocrity and sensationalism which dominate the press to-day. A sensational ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... like his father. After the tea-things were put away, the girls brought each a little box to the table, in which was a quantity of odd pieces of muslin, ribbon, silk, etc., and they passed the evening in making these things up into frills and other articles of finery. The boy brought a quantity of wood to the further end of the table, and with no tool but a knife and a little saw, he employed himself in making little toys. That evening he made a dining-table and ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... narrow, natural basin, hollowed out by the water in a clayey soil, about two feet deep, surrounded with moss and with those tall, crimped grasses which are called Henry IV.'s frills, and paved with several large stones. A brook ran out of it, with a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... Park; cool iced drinks sipped through straws, and luscious dishes of fruit. Instead of Agnes, stiff and starched and tailor-made, a radiant vision in muslin and laces, with a ruffled golden head, and distracting little feet peeping out from beneath the frills. ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... sulk and be cross because you can't have everything you want. Be happy where you were put. Did you ever hear the little poem called The Discontented Buttercup? It is the story of a buttercup who mourned because she couldn't be a daisy with white frills like her neighbor flowers, and she didn't see the loveliness of the day nor feel the softness of the breezes because she spent all her time in vain wishes. So she asked a robin who had paused to rest near her if he wouldn't try to find her a nice white frill ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown

... the barrios, who gladly performed this service, imposed by the matanda sa nayon, [105] each one designing and fashioning his own lantern, adorning it as his fancy prompted and his finances permitted with a greater or less number of frills and little streamers, and lighting it with a piece of candle if he had a friend or relative who was a sacristan, or if he could buy one of the small red tapers such as the Chinese burn before ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... her, nor the donkey, nor the man-servant. She was walking with a nurse, and she carried a big doll in her arms. The doll, as I have said before, was "got up" wonderfully like its mistress. It had a miniature coat and cape and frills, it had leggings, it had a white plush bonnet (so my wife enables me to affirm), it had hair just the colour ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... blacksmiths, playwrights who were costumers, playwrights who were musical-boxes, playwrights who were, if I may be pardoned, garbage incinerators. It remained, for Mr. Laurence to show us what can be done with scissors, needle, and a nice taste in frills. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... a brick, sweetheart," he said heartily, "and I've got a reward for you, a peace offering. Get on your frills, for we're going to a first night. Sanders was called out of town, had the tickets on his hands, and turned them over to me. Hurry up while I get ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... baby, who reared his head and opened wide his great blue eyes, and beat his arms at the lights of the chandelier, as no baby of nearly six months ever did yet. So thought Barbara. He was in his clean white nightgown and nightcap, with their pretty crimped frills and border; altogether a pleasant sight to look upon. She had once sat in that very chair, with a baby as fair upon her own knee; but all that was past and gone. She leaned her hot head upon her hand, and a rebellious sigh of envy went forth from ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... dresser, its shelves decorated with precious china and silver. On the walls were pictures of bygone Hunters in various costumes, Marjory's favourite being a dashing young cavalier, with hat and feather, collar and frills of costly lace, and all the other appointments of the period. Marjory used to amuse herself trying to imagine her Uncle George dressed in such a style. There was the admiral in cocked hat and gold lace; the minister in black gown and orthodox ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... lizards, when fighting together during their courtship, expand their throat pouches or frills, and erect their dorsal crests.[16] But Dr. Gunther does not believe that they can erect ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... her sister Mrs. Stephen Brigham, who had been Emma Glynn, the one beauty of the family. She was beautiful still, with a large, splendid, full-blown beauty; she filled a great rocking-chair with her superb bulk of femininity, and swayed gently back and forth, her black silks whispering and her black frills fluttering. Even the shock of death (for her brother Edward lay dead in the house,) could not disturb her outward serenity of demeanour. She was grieved over the loss of her brother: he had been the youngest, and she had been fond of him, but never had Emma Brigham lost sight of her ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... gave the arm the faintest glance of appreciation before it retreated into lace frills within its brown sleeve. Those lace frills were the only apparent extravagance in the simple frock in question, and simplicity was the chief note ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... consulted he would save the cream of condemnatory epithets for the cable-cart, which makes his night horrible with useless telegrams. The nightmare of that midnight message, with its probable four pages of closely written ciphers! Those fine popinjays in starched kerseys and pink frills, who live in luxury at railway centres, think that it adds to their dignity if they convert their most trivial messages into cipher. Little do they consider the poor tired being whom they rob of hard-earned rest to open out that cipher. It pleases them. They have nothing to do ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... Spring. An oval space lay before him, exceedingly lovely in the moonlight; a spring, as if a pearl, gemmed the center. An Indian guard stood statuelike against a stone. Other savages lay in a row, their polished heads shining. One slumbering form was bedecked with feathers and frills. Near him lay an Indian blanket, from the border of which peered two faces, gleaming white and sad in the ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... of our varnished and velvet-carpeted civilisation, it is well that we should be brought back to the old essential candours which forever underlie the frills and frippery. It is well that the stark bones of the aboriginal skeleton with its raw "unaccommodated" flesh should peep ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... certain public man as a 'big sucker'. I soon learned that to him a 'sucker' was the lowest and meanest thing in the world. He sent me away with nothing but a great admiration of him. As a rule, the giants of that day were plain men of the people, with no frills upon them, and with a way of hitting from the shoulder. They said what they meant and meant it hard. I have heard Lincoln talk when his words had the whiz of a bullet and his arm the ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... him to do without matches, using as a substitute "lights," tapers of twisted paper to be ignited at the famous stove. He found amusement for two days in twisting and rolling these "lights," cutting frills in the larger ends with a pair of scissors, and stacking them afterward in a Chinese flower jar he had bought for the purpose and stood on top of the bookcases. The lights were admirably made and looked very pretty. When ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... unmeaning, her flaxen eyebrows heavy, her flaxen curls crowned by a pea-green turban. Her choice attire was generally composed, as to-day, of some cheap, flimsy, gauzy material bright in colour. This evening it was orange lace, all flounces and frills, with a lace scarf; and she generally had innumerable ends of quilted net flying about her skirts, not unlike tails. It was certain she did not spend much money upon her own attire; and how she procured the costly ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... path. She was a wisp of a creature, perfectly fashioned and very appealing in her blond prettiness. Isabel eyed her sharply and judged from certain signs that she had at least meant to go. She had on her light-blue dimity with the Hamburg frills, and her sorrowful face indicated that she had donned it to ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... the rattle of a chain hard by, and a heavy bark, as a great dog like a greyhound that had grown stout, came out of a kennel formed of a barrel laid on its side. The great beast looked at the two collies and growled, while the latter set up the dense frills of hair about their necks and ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... cushions; but no new books, or comfy sofas, or look of cosy anywhere. The bathrooms to each room are superb; miles beyond one's ideas of them in general at home. Tom says he can't sleep because the embroidered monograms on the pillows and things scratch his cheek, and the lace frills tickle his nose, while he catches his toes in the Venetian insertion in the sheets. The linen itself is the finest you ever saw, Mamma, and would be too exquisite plain. Now one knows where all those marvellously ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... predatory bands of spiders. Even the looking-glass, a miserably cheap construction which distorted every face whose owner had the hardihood to look into it, stood upon a draperied altar of starched muslin and pink glazed calico, and was adorned with frills of lace ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... stopped there, shorn of a donator's gracious frills, and the smile became somewhat fixed upon the ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... not commend itself to me. Why not enjoy this moment, instead of waiting until the moment after next? It was too much like saving up one's good clothes for "best," a lower-middle-class habit which I have detested since the days when I howled for my smartest Lord Fauntleroy frills in ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... courses when they attend pedagogic conventions. Your Exposition loaded New York's educational authorities with medals and prizes and honorable mentions. I would not censure you for this. No men ever worked harder for such honors. The trouble is they work too hard over frills and neglect the essentials. Were your judges to-day to hold an examination among our grammar scholars upon the three subjects, reading, writing and arithmetic, I am inclined to believe that you would send hurry orders for the return of many of ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... overwhelmed with invitations from counts and countesses; dining at Holland House in London with Lord and Lady Holland; a guest of honor at a ball given by a prince in Rome; presented at the brilliant Tuscan court at Florence, for which occasion he was decked in lace frills and ruff, with dress hat and sword;—such incidents of his foreign life began to be mentioned to account for Cooper's disinclination to encourage familiar acquaintance with ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... broke in, doing my best to speak calmly and quietly. "Those three years were really the happiest three years of all my life. I love to remember them, for they mean so much more than all the others. There were a lot of the frills and fixin's of life that we had to do without. But those three years brought us closer together, Dinky-Dunk, than we have ever been since we moved into this big house and got on bowing terms again ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... somehow never anything but fresh, no matter how much she wore them. It was true that there were not very many of them, and that none of them had cost very much money, but they were fascinating frocks nevertheless, and she had so many clever ways of varying them with knots of ribbon and frills of lace, that one never grew tired of ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond

... Polly, with his hair wildly disordered, his face covered with black smudges and streaked with perspiration, and his trouser legs scorched and blackened; the other was an elderly lady, quietly but becomingly dressed in black, with small white frills at her neck and wrists and a Sunday cap of ecru lace enlivened with a black velvet bow. Her hair was brushed back from her wrinkled brow and plastered down tightly, meeting in a small knob behind; her wrinkled mouth bore that expression of supreme resolution common ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... seem to have acquired such attractive ways of hanging our pictures as the Swedes, Hollanders, or Italians practice; probably for lack of funds. At any rate the American section looks very businesslike and very democratic, without all the frills and fancies of other nations, where every psychological advantage has been taken in order to make things palatable. We have even been criticized for our lack of spaciousness in hanging, but let us not grieve over ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... up with a characteristic impetuosity that sent her basket tumbling down the steps, and crowned her dozing cat with Prue's nightcap frills. "Do you mean it, Mark? Wouldn't it spoil your pleasure, Mr. Moor? Shouldn't I be a trouble, Mr. Warwick? Tell me frankly, for if I can go I shall be happier ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... generally ruled out of her life as sinful, and rarely were a temptation, but occasionally her mother, remembering her own good times, let her and her sisters go to parties at the homes of their Presbyterian neighbors, and for this her father was criticized at Friends' Meeting. Condemning bright colors, frills, and jewelry as vain and worldly, Susan accepted plain somber clothing as a mark of righteousness, and when she deviated to the extent of wearing the Scotch-plaid coat which her mother had bought her, she wondered if the big rent torn in it by a dog might not ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... at entering a Protestant church, yet as soon as I had taken my seat and looked up at the gallery of the organ, where the children sat tier on tier, so quaint and sweet—the boys like robins in their bright red waistcoats, and the girls like rabbits in their mob-caps with fluted frills—and the service began, and the fresh young voices rose in hymns of praise to the good Father of us all, I thought Of nothing except the joy of seeing Isabel there some day and hearing her singing ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... thoughts are not as thine. A sterner purpose fills Her steadfast soul with deep design Of baby bows and frills; What care hath she for worlds without, What heed for yellow sun, Whose endless hopes revolve about ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... vast brown fullness that you see in pictures of old Flemish friars. His legs were like rounded columns and unadorned, moreover, with those superfluous paper frills; and his tail was half as big as your hand and it protruded grandly, like the rudder of a treasure-ship, and had flanges of sizzled richness on it. Here was no pindling fowl that had taken the veil and lived the ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... of the other. Then they both pulled and out from the heap of popcorn came a little boy. He was dressed in a brown velvet jacket and knickerbockers, with brown stockings, buckled shoes and a blue shirt-waist that had frills down its front. When drawn from the heap the boy was chewing a mouthful of popcorn and both his hands were full of it. So at first he couldn't speak to his rescuers but lay quite still and eyed them calmly until he had swallowed ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... maids, they talked gossip about every one, and I did not like that either. I knew the minute my back was turned they would fasten into me and hint that I used hair-dye and declare it was perfectly ridiculous for a woman of FIFTY to wear a pink muslin dress with lace-trimmed frills. ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... sure that the drains and everything were right. Then her "girl friends" would come on a certain solemn day to see all her "lovely things." "Two dozen of everything!" "Look, Ethel, did you ever see such ducky frills?" "And that insertion, isn't it quite too sweet?" "My dear Edith, you are a lucky girl." "All the underlinen specially made by Madame Lulu!" "What delicious things!" "I hope he knows what a prize he is ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... pretty and graceful. It was a mere acted charade of the 'Finding of Moses,' got up impromptu as it were; the ladies being in ball-room attire, with high powdered heads, strung with pearls and surmounted with feathers; their silken dresses trimmed with laces, and frills, and furbelows; their faces well whitened and rouged, according to the mode of the day. It was more like a plate from a fashion-book than a scene from Scripture history. True, some small attempt at imparting ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... knew you were all right, you know. You put on a few frills at first, of course, but you ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... way to hire a reverend, but I was too rushed to think up the proper frills. I had to attend to a lot of little things, among 'em bein' this plant with Auntie's cruisin' friend, the widow. She was in the habit, Mrs. Mumford was, of pickin' Auntie up now and then for an evenin' drive in her limousine; and what I was tryin' ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... had summoned her father to show him a new costume which had just been sent home by Van Klopen, and which pleased her greatly. Flavia's costume was a masterpiece of fashionable bad taste, which makes women look all alike and destroys all appearance of individuality. It was a mass of frills, furbelows, fringes, and flutings of rare hue and form, making a series of wonderful contrasts. Standing in the middle of the room, with every available candle alight, for the day was fading away, she was so ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... were, on a small scale, the boots of a ploughman, while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratches that they looked like maps, were bare below a very short pair of plaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly different patterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been supplied from one of Mr. Jellyby's coats, they were so extremely brazen and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens of needlework appeared on several ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... and ears, creeping down to her white neck, the fair curls clustered. Soft and narrow folds of white muslin, lace, and fine embroidery, clothed her slender figure with an exaggerated simplicity. Her foot, just advanced beyond the frills of the gown, her white long fingers clasping her fan; every feature, every touch, every detail, was as finely beautiful as art and nature could make it; Helene was the perfection of dainty aristocracy in the ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... costly authenticities of dressmakers and jewellers. Her flutter—pale disconcerted ghost as she actually was, a broken white flower tied round, almost grotesquely for his present sense, with a huge satin "bow" of the Boulevard—her flutter had been mainly that of ribbons, frills and fine fabrics; all funny, pathetic evidence, for memory, of the bewilderments overtaking them as a bridal pair confronted with opportunity. He could wince, fairly, still, as he remembered the sense in which the poor girl's ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... is made of pasteboard and has a transparent centre with a picture of Christ through which the light of a candle shines. One boy carries the star and another twirls the points.{54} In Roumania it is made of wood and adorned with frills and little bells. A representation of the "manger," illuminated from behind, forms the centre, and the star also shows pictures of ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... at her dressing table and rang for her maid. Madame Pompadour herself had no lovelier boudoir than Beatrice. It was replete with rose-coloured taffeta curtains, padded sky-blue silk walls with garlands of appliqued flowers. Lace frills covered every possible object; the ivory furniture was emphasized by smart rose upholstery, and the dressing table itself fairly dazzled one by the array of gold-topped ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... the dressing-room, vague impression of near marble basins and rows of mirrors; tall, slim girl in front of one, quite the proper "saleslady" air, in new, six-dollar black skirt and silk blouse lightened with sewed-in frills of white, fit not noticeably bad; dash along corridor again for locker room, but sudden wavering pause at sight of confused group: half-fainting girl in black being handed over to capped and aproned nurse by two youths at ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... she flushed herself with scarlet or faded into primrose, made herself pretty in the bluest of blue gowns, or turned livid under a gooseberry colored bonnet. Her hat-brims went up or down, were preposterously wide or dwindled to an inch, as the mode demanded. Her skirts were rampant with sixteen frills, or picturesque with landscapes down each side, and a Greek border or a plain hem. Her waists were as pointed as those of Queen Bess or as short as Diana's; and it was the opinion of those who knew her that if the autocrat ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... orchard, and that large field quartered into four different crops. How comfortable this cottage looks, and how well the owners earn their comforts! They are the most prosperous pair in the parish—she a laundress with twenty times more work than she can do, unrivalled in flounces and shirt-frills, and such delicacies of the craft; he, partly a farmer, partly a farmer's man, tilling his own ground, and then tilling other people's;—affording a proof, even in this declining age, when the circumstances of ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... never find in forty-seven decks One tenth of the variety found in the gentler sex. Card combinations are but frills to ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... dainty white frills lovingly as she remembered the sunny summer days at home in the little sewing-room, where cherry boughs poked their blossoms in at the window, when her mother and sisters had helped her to make it, with laughing prophesies and speculations as to its first appearance. Into seam and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... makes the rear-guard swear so 'ard when night is drorin' in, An' every native follower is shiverin' for 'is skin? It ain't the chanst o' being rushed by Paythans from the 'ills, It's the commissariat camel puttin' on 'is bloomin' frills! O the oont, O the oont, O the hairy scary oont! A-trippin' over tent-ropes when we've got the night alarm! We socks 'im with a stretcher-pole an' 'eads 'im off in front, An' when we've saved 'is bloomin' life ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... immense success from every standpoint, Mrs. Prout cooked like cordon bleu, Zephania, all starch and frills and excitement, served like a—but no, she didn't; she served in a manner quite her own, bringing on the oysters with a whispered aside to Wade that she had "most forgot the ice," introducing the chicken with a triumphant laugh, and ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour

... it's come to; after all the airs and frills and the goin' to Europe and I don't know what all. Here she is keepin' an eatin' house. An eatin' house—just THINK of it! If that ain't a comedown! Wouldn't you think she'd be ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... twenty-nine thousand. That went to Edward's money-lending friends in Monte Carlo. So she had to get the twenty-nine thousand back, for she did not regard the Vandykes and the silver as things she would have to replace. They were just frills to the Ashburnham vanity. Edward cried for two days over the disappearance of his ancestors and then she wished she had not done it; but it did not teach her anything and it lessened such esteem as she had for him. She did not ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... turned from a glance at her profile to contemplate the bride-elect, and saw in her all that the modern young man wishes to find in a girl, the sparkle of spirit, yet the feminine softness; a frou-frou of temperament as well as of frills; a face of childlike clarity set with two gay eyes; hair dressed to tempt and cajole; a little figure of thin frailty that gave her a beautiful delicacy of appearance; ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... once and get over it. It would have been impossible not to stare, for the change in her appearance was positively startling to behold. Her dark hair was waved and fashionably coiffed. Her best coat and skirt had been embellished with frills of lace at neck and sleeves, a pretty little waistcoat had been manufactured out of a length of blue ribbon and a few paste buttons, while a blue feather necklet had been promoted a step higher, and encircled an old straw hat. The ribbon bow at the ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... deal with us?" asked the ingenuous Harman. "Lord! one might think the job we was on was tryin' to sell a laundry. It's safe enough, for who can say we didn't hit the wreck cruisin' round promiscuous, but it won't hold no frills in the way of Honesty and such. Down with you, and close the bargain with that chap and tip him the wink that, though we're mugs enough to give him six thousand dollars for the loan of his old shark-boat, we're men enough to put a pistol bullet in his gizzard if he ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... most beautiful of his several seats; the splendid horses and equipages; and, thyself, Lambkin, think of thyself bedecked in gorgeous hued brocades; be-furbelowed in rare lace and costly furs. And thou wilt have a maid to build thy hair, tie shoulder knots and make smart ribbons and frills, and furbish bijoux and gems. And thou wilt wear perfume, and carry a nosegay and fan. And thou wilt sweep the most graceful courtesy and queen it everywhere with thy sweet graciousness. Thy father says thou shouldst become an idol to the old ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... was fond of grey; and in something of our Quaker fashion. On this day, I remember, I noticed an especial carefulness of attire, at his age neither unnatural nor unbecoming. His well-fitting coat and long-flapped vest, garnished with the snowiest of lawn frills and ruffles; his knee-breeches, black silk hose, and shoes adorned with the largest and brightest of steel buckles, made up a costume, which, quaint as it would now appear, still is, to my mind, the most suitable and graceful that a young man can ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... her slow, purposeful, half- indolent movements, the poise of her small, patrician head, the unconscious, easy grace of her body, the direct commonsense quality of her mind. One met her face to face; there were no frills and furbelows of the spirit. Also, Nan was grateful for the other woman's first kindness and real sympathy, and she wanted to "play the game." But, on the other hand, all her social training and her instinct of formalism tended to hold ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... paused, eyeing Ronny in mild surprise. Ronny had broken into a hearty laugh. Jerry as an infant was so irresistibly funny. Her chubby figure in the high-waisted tucked and belaced gown and her round face looking out from the fluted lace frills of a close-fitting bonnet made her appear precisely like a ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... preparation of a mask she was paying dearly for and yet didn't prize at all. An old-fashioned nightcap with a frill covered her head, and she had tied herself so tightly into it that he must be a bold adventurer who would get at the thoughts inside. Her little hands were shaded by fine frills. She looked, on the whole, like a disenchanted lingerer in the living world, a useless creature for whom fostering had done so much that you might ask: "What is this illustration of a clean old woman? What is it ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... altiloquence &c adj.^; declamation, teratology^; well-rounded periods; elegance &c 578; orotundity. inversion, antithesis, alliteration, paronomasia; figurativeness &c (metaphor) 521. flourish; flowers of speech, flowers of rhetoric; frills of style, euphuism^, euphemism. big-sounding words, high-sounding words; macrology^, sesquipedalia verba [Lat.], Alexandrine; inflation, pretension; rant, bombast, fustian, prose run mad; fine writing; sesquipedality^; Minerva press. phrasemonger; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... he remarked to his neighbour; "wonder if she's goin' out to be married. Nice-looking woman and pleasant, no frills about her—sort that would be kind ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... the scarf fell neglected over the soft, cambric frills of his shirt. Jasper Penny swallowed dryly. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... merely Senor, when she brought him to Mexico. Now she has added Tremonti to his title. She herself is baptized Eliza. She is a pretty, kittenish little thing, deathly afraid of cock-roaches and caterpillars, devoted to frills and fetching furbelows, and fond of taking picturesque poses in the moonlight with the slinky greyhound. No, her voice is not to be compared to the Little Colonel's, but it is sweet and sympathetic, very effective in ballads and simple things. We sing together whenever I happen to drop ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... They're fearfully skimpy. There is never enough to go around in an asylum, so things are always skimpy—at least in a poor asylum like ours. I hate skimpy night-dresses. But one can dream just as well in them as in lovely trailing ones, with frills around the ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... and marked neatly by herself; two dozen worsted and thread stockings, knit by herself; twelve pocket-handkerchiefs; six stout petticoats; four flannel do.; six pair of shoes; eight caps; eight neck-frills; umbrella; prayer-book; gold earrings and cross—which two last, with a beautiful lace-cap, she inherited, but everything else was of her own earning. She bought a wardrobe and bedstead, and was by degrees getting furniture; and as I exacted no sewing, every ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... her somberly. "You better think twice before you ask me that," he warned; "because I ain't much good at beating all around the bush. If you ask me again, I'll tell you—and I'm liable to tell you without any frills." He drew a hard breath. "So I'd advise you not to ask," ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... on the mouth organ. He played excellently well, with all sorts of variations and frills. We smoked in silence. The deep rumble of the cattle filled the air with its diapason. Always the shrill coyotes raved out in the mesquite. Sacatone Bill had finished his meal, and had gone to sit by Jed Parker, his old ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... The lace-trimmed frills of a white cambric petticoat peeped under the hem of her green cloth skirt; below there was a glimpse of slender, crossed ankles in brown silk hose, and the little brown shoes laced with wide silk ties. She drew off one of her thin, loose tan gloves, and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... relates to me a tale which I allers looks on as possessin' elements. Shore; an' it's as simple an' straight as the sights of a gun. It's about a squaw an' three bucks, an' thar's enough blood in it to paint a waggon. Which I reckons now I'll relate it plain an' easy an' free of them frills wherewith a professional racontoor is so prone to ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... Proclamation to the Pirates to lay down their arms and go away; and everybody had been hustling him about and tumbling over him, while he was calling for pen and ink to write it with. Mrs. Pordage, too, had some curious ideas about the British respectability of her nightcap (which had as many frills to it, growing in layers one inside another, as if it was a white vegetable of the artichoke sort), and she wouldn't take the nightcap off, and would be angry when it got crushed by the other ladies who were handing things about, and, in short, she ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens

... Severini, the painter calls: "An arabesque of the movement produced by the twinkling colours and iridescence of the frills and furbelows on show; the electric light divides the scene into defined zones. A study of simultaneous penetration." The deathly grin of the modiste is about the only "simultaneous penetration" that I could ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... from floor to floor, a still warm supply of them looped over one arm, Mrs. Kaufman, who wore bombazine, but unspotted and with crisp net frills at the throat, and upon whose soft-looking face the years had written their chirography in invisible ink, would sit suddenly, there in the narrow gloom of her halls, head against the balustrade. Oftener than not the Katz boy from the third floor front would ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... Longman hasn't quite caught the true note," the architect remarked. "The base of the fountain is interesting, though I don't care for the shape. But the figure itself is too prim and modish. Somehow I can't think of Ceres as a proper old maid, dressed with modern frills. The execution, however, shows a good deal of skill. The frieze might be improved by the softening of those sharp lines that cut out the figures like pasteboard. And these women haven't as much vitality as that grotesque head down near the base, spouting out water." ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... us, Dwelling on the ills Which infallibly await us In our empty tills; But these frenzied fair ones, furious in the quest of the luxurious, Still pursue a most injurious Cult of frocks and frills. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various

... hour of 4 a.m. to make her war toilette. By 4.15 she had sunk the lady and put on the man of war. Gone were the gay companions; closed the tight compartments and stowed away under armour were all her furbelows and frills. In plain English, our mighty battleship was cleared for action, and—my mind—that also has now been cleared of its everyday lumber: ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... suicide, nor about the girl with whom he fell in love while he was in France. Do you suppose that Stevenson's 'Memories and Portraits' represent the youthful R. L. S. with photographic accuracy and with all his frills? Not at all. Stevenson's essays are charming; and Wordsworth's poem is beautiful,—in streaks it is as fine as anything that he ever wrote: but both of these works belong to literature because they are packed full of omissions,—which Stevenson ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... bedroom, his needs had apparently been anticipated; for there, folded up neatly upon the pillow, was a sleeping garment ready for use. He appreciated the consideration; but having attired himself for bed, he found himself enveloped in a frothy abundance of frills and fal-lals, lace at the wrists, lace round the neck, with flutters of ribbon here and there. When, at the breakfast table in the morning, he related how he had been rigged, there was a shriek of laughter ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... the seventeen years of his life. The chattering brooks had nothing to say to him as they came dashing down from the hills to join the rollicking stream whose course his path followed; the sunflowers, gilding the edge of the road, were but frills and furbelows to his thinking. But in the pine-trees there was a perfectly clear significance,—in those hardy growths, finding a foothold among the rocks, drawing sustenance from Heaven knew where, yet ever growing skyward, straight and tall and strong. As he passed among them, standing ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... dollars, their losses were very trifling, as it is the custom for a man in the Western States to carry all his money in his pocket-book, and his pocket-book in his pocket; as to luggage, he never has any except a small valise, two feet long, in which are contained a shirt, two bosoms, three frills, a razor, and a brush, which may serve for his head, clothing, ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... I've accepted you. Do you think I'm going to lose the one real playmate I've ever had? It was so lonely on the Boltwoods' brown stoop till Milt came along and whistled impertinently and made the solemn little girl in frills play marbles and—— Watch out for that turn! Heavens, how I have to look after you! Is there a class in cooking at ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... They run down out of heaven. Coming home from somewhere down the long tired road They flake us sometimes The way they do the grass, And the stretch of the world. The grass-blades are crowned with snowflakes. They make me think of daisies With white frills around their necks With golden faces and green gowns; Poor little daisies, Tip-toe and shivering ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling

... in admiration at the ladies in their quaint gowns of stiff brocade, and at the men in their lace frills, and satin waistcoats. ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks

... his charms was too much even for his admirers. The mental juxtaposition of the seedy poet and the piquant actress in her frills and furbelows set the whole cafe rocking with laughter. Pinchas took it as a tribute to his ingenious method of drawing the soubrette-serpent's fangs. He ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... every two months, and brushes it all down myself," she explained, "and I've never had anyone to help me before. If I were to let them girls in they'd break every vase in the place with their frills and their 'didn't see's.'" ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... the barracks. But once assigned to duty over the firing line he receives the treatment accorded an officer, no matter what his grade. Save when he is flying or on guard, his time is his own. There are no roll calls or other military frills, and in place of the bunk he slept upon as an eleve, he finds a regular bed in a room to himself, and the services of an orderly. Even men of higher rank who although connected with his escadrille are not pilots, treat him with respect. His two mechanicians ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell

... stir and moving back of chairs to make way for him. He made his way straight to the coffin. When he reached it and looked down, he started. Perhaps the sight of the white dress with its simple girlish frills and homelike prettiness brought back to him some memory of happier days when he had ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... and Betty seating themselves on either side of their grandfather, while Dorothy Burrow stood before him, her stout red arms uncovered, her elbows stuck on either side of her thick waist, and the frills of her big calico cap blown back ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall

... the past thirty years, had eaten the same meal in the same little restaurant under the street. This he told Honora, on his left, as though it were not history. He preferred apple pie to the greatest of artistic triumphs of his daughter's chef, and had it; a glorified apple pie, with frills and furbelows, and whipped cream which he angrily swept ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... they saw the creatures, could not help expressing exclamations of disgust at their appearance. They were like gigantic slugs, or long black bags with frills at the top. Mr Hooker purchased a basket full of the creatures, which he wished to ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... legs. The room was extremely bare, but with a bright foreign bareness that was very cheerful, in an odd way of its own. At the end of the polished table a very un-English little boy sat on a footstool in a high-backed, uncomfortable-looking chair. He wore black velvet, and the kind of collar—all frills and lacey—that Robert would rather have died than wear; but then the little French boy was ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... persuaded from staying in the country with the child. She went twice a week, to make sure that all went well. Henriette and she lived with the child's picture before them; they spent their time sewing on caps and underwear—all covered with laces and frills and pink and blue ribbons. Every day, when George came home from his work, he found some new article completed, and was ravished by the scent of some new kind of sachet powder. What a lucky man ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair

... season the rich brown seed-vessels are as handsome as the flowers in the spring. All around on the rocky road-side banks and in dry fields the airy wild columbine and pretty corydalis blossoms nod in every breeze, and the ravines on the hills are fringed with the softest frills of exquisite leaves and odd flowers of the Dutchman's-breeches and squirrel-corn, whitish and pinkish, and with the ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... along in his tight knee-breeches looking down with vain satisfaction now and then at the ruffles of his shirt and the box-pleated frills that were dressed very snodly and cunningly by Bell Macniven, who had been in the Forty-second with her husband the sergeant, and had dressed the shirts of the Marquis ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... party politics in his Whig Examiner; its "grand tour," as part of a gentleman's education, in his Remarks on Italy; its adventure on foreign soil in such poems as "The Campaign"; its new drama of decency in his Cato; its classic delusions in his Account of the Greatest English Poets; its frills, fashions and similar matters in his Spectator essays. He tried almost every type of literature, from hymns to librettos, and in each he succeeded well enough to be loudly applauded. In his own day he was accounted a master poet, but ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... we are off. Oh, the joy of those gallops with the horsemen of the desert! For the moment you are mad. Your nomad ancestors—we all have them—awake in you, and it is touch and go but you turn your back forever on duties and dining, on all the bonds and frills that we have entangled ourselves in—and then you remember, and ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... lip as he took off his hunting coat. Being now in his ordinary sleeping costume he approached the bed, but did not like the look of it. No wonder! Besides being obviously too short, it had white curtains with frills or flounces of some sort, with various tags and tassels around, and it did not look strong. He sat cautiously down on the side of it, however, and put one leg in. The sheets felt unpleasant to his naked foot, but not being particular, he shoved ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne



Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com