furbelow

noun

1. A frill, flounce, or ruffle, as on clothing; a decorative piece of fabric, especially one gathered or pleated as into a ruffle, etc.

   “I do not think that from the blissful time when I was sixteen, up to my present solemn five-and-thirty, I could ever have been tempted to look a second time at any miss under the chaperonship of such a dame as that feather and furbelow lady.”

   “All the other furbelows, and portions of this one^([this Medusa]) that lay below the expansion, floated as usual through the water, except that on some occasions an accessory power was obtained by pressing a portion of another furbelow to the side of the glass and making it adhere just like the portion that was exposed to the surface of the air.”

   ““Well, I don’t know that fifty is much for a dress, with all the furbelows and notions you have to have to finish it off these days.””

   “Winterbourne stood looking after her; and as she moved away, drawing her muslin furbelows over the gravel, said to himself that she had the tournure of a princess.”

   “Those dresses are good, sensible, serviceable dresses, without any frills or furbelows about them, and they’re all you’ll get this summer.”

2. (broadly)A small, showy ornamentation.

   “Within, among the bric-a-brac and furbelows, he found Miss Painter seated in a redundant purple armchair with the incongruous air of a horseman bestriding a heavy mount.”

   “The band played ceaselessly. Even when the other instruments were resting the pianist kept up his monotonous vamping, with a dreary furbelow for embellishment here and there, to which some few of the dancers continued to shuffle round the floor.”

verb

1. (transitive)To adorn with a furbelow; to ornament.

   “Mrs. Palmer, and her furbelowed daughters-in-law, who will probably carry enough of the scarlet fever about them, to remind you unpleasantly of the officiousness which preserved the lives of three daughters, when two might have been parted with advantageously enough.”