fallal
nounEtymology Perhaps an alteration of falbala (“furbelow”), from French.
1
A piece of ribbon worn as a streamer.
2
Dated, In plural, Often Any trifling ornament.
- Wherever she went she had, if not the finest, at any rate the most showy gown in the room; her ornaments were the biggest; her hats, toques, berets, marabouts, and other fallals, always the most conspicuous.1852, William Makepeace Thackeray, Men's Wives, New York: D. Appleton & Company, page 122:
- I should be ashamed to coddle myself as you do! And yet I am old. I need looking after. And there! there! fitting up gowns! fallals!1886, Gustave Flaubert, chapter V, in Eleanor Marx-Aveling, transl., Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners […], London: Vizetelly & Co., […], →OCLC, part III, page 301:
1 more example
- He would pay her bills, you know, and even that with a good deal of reluctance and asking what she wanted all those fal-lals for—so like a man—1926, Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd:
- Derived terms
- fallalery, fallalishly