What's the difference between elegance and frippery?

Elegance


Definition:

  • (n.) Alt. of Elegancy

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Today, she wears an elegant salmon-pink blouse with white trousers and a long, pale pink coat.
  • (2) Rather than an off-plan Oxshott monster-mansion, he moved his family to an elegant Eaton Terrace townhouse in south-west London.
  • (3) She followed that with a job at Bibendum – she still talks of Simon Hopkinson, "such an elegant cook, so particular and clean and efficient", with deep reverence – and another at Roscoff in Northern Ireland.
  • (4) It's typically sober and elegant, and Cotillard excels in a nervy, vulnerable role.
  • (5) Yet, in spite of this restriction, the 2-mu plasmid of yeast has evolved an elegant mechanism which can allow it to rapidly amplify its copy number without initiating multiple rounds of replication.
  • (6) It is readily expressed as clinical sensitivity and specificity, and elegantly represented by the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.
  • (7) And there is plenty of beauty in London - seeing Parliament Square in the snow, the dome of St Paul's rising above the City, the simple perfection of a Georgian terrace or the quietly elegant streets of Mayfair.
  • (8) The portion of my sample prawn orzo was a modest but polished plate of food, the dense bisque and silky grains of pasta elegantly punctuated by small bursts of tart, sweet semi-dried tomato.
  • (9) He believed that western liberal democracy, with its elegant balance of liberty and equality, could not be bettered; that its attainment would lead to a general calming in world affairs; and that in the long run it would be the only credible game in town.
  • (10) Total-Body Scanner is rather an elegant method but a discontinuous one.
  • (11) Foundas also praises Magic's photography, calling its "elegantly choreographed traveling master shots bathed in natural light" a key part of "one of his most beautifully made films."
  • (12) It is the latest in a series of sculpture commissions to occupy the elegant neoclassical galleries, which stretch back 86 metres from the museum's main entrance on the banks of the Thames.
  • (13) Sean Ingle Wimbledon No one has broken Roger Federer’s serve at these championships, let alone taken a set, and the appreciative midsummer murmurs from No1 Court as the seven-times Wimbledon champion elegantly dissected Tommy Robredo suggested they believe he retains the game to win a record eighth title.
  • (14) The intricate wood carving, the elegant furniture, the panelled walls, the grand entrance hall and the cantilevered stairs are undeniably impressive.
  • (15) Whenever I read Philip French's elegant and thoughtful criticism, I felt like I was in the company of someone who not only loved cinema but who felt a sense of responsibility toward it as an art form.
  • (16) It was not an elegant parting, as Christine Bleakley was pushed out by the BBC on Sunday afternoon , leaving ITV to scramble a contract together for her to sign two hours later.
  • (17) It positioned Kelela as a significant new vocalist, her phrasing indebted to pop but somehow elegantly haunting.
  • (18) The unfairly maligned camel is a model of sleek, practical and elegant design compared with the clumsy creature the coalition has produced.
  • (19) The idea that huge, intractable social issues such as sexism and racism could be affected in such simple ways had a powerful intuitive appeal, and hinted at the possibility of equally simple, elegant solutions.
  • (20) The Elegance room – it sounds like a department of Harrods – sets the grand social portraits of Rubens alongside artists they “influenced”.

Frippery


Definition:

  • (n.) Coast-off clothes.
  • (n.) Hence: Secondhand finery; cheap and tawdry decoration; affected elegance.
  • (n.) A place where old clothes are sold.
  • (n.) The trade or traffic in old clothes.
  • (a.) Trifling; contemptible.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) As the Powell quote above suggests, as of the early 1970s, they led the way into a world where the most ambitious groups dispensed with band-portraits, and even typography: to this day, even if album "sleeves" are now often boiled down to the size of a postage stamp, musicians usually serve notice of their ambition by leaving such fripperies off their artwork.
  • (2) Caucus and party members should use this contest to show that Labor has moved on from its leadership being determined on the basis of opinion polls, or the number of positive media profiles, or the amount of time spent schmoozing media owners and editors, or the frippery of selfies and content-less social media.
  • (3) But the fripperies, he acknowledges, are important.
  • (4) Based on the icons some claim to have seen, and the posters for the conference, the expectation is that it will follow Ive's philosophy: no frippery in appearance, and a "flatter", more functional appearance.
  • (5) The cross-section of the public who draw up the standard, in collaboration with Loughborough University researchers, allow little in the way of fripperies.
  • (6) With hindsight I wish we’d taken charge of education and not wasted time on gimmicky fripperies from Michael Gove and his advisers,” he said.
  • (7) But this is the wheelhouse of the mayor of a modern megacity: a strange balance between issues of global importance and fripperies like openings, baby-kissing tours and pie-eating contests – and if you happen to be Boris Johnson, performing the Mobot from time to time.
  • (8) It might seem the antithesis of Reynolds the neoclassicist; but it is actually a perfect example of the "ideal" discovered beneath the fripperies of nature.
  • (9) Cameron said the voters would not be swayed by unspecified "fripperies" but by whether the government delivered "good results about the things that British people care about".
  • (10) A solid device beneath a layer of whiz-bang frippery - New York Times Digging beneath the gimmicky features the New York Times's Farhad Manjoo found a solid, basic smartphone .
  • (11) In this carefully cultivated narrative, it is only the out-of-touch middle classes, who don’t live in the real world, who are able to indulge in the luxurious fripperies of socialism.
  • (12) Most of us enjoy the opportunity for a spending spree and, of course, anyone who wants to drop some cash in exchange for non-essential fripperies should do just that, with the usual disclaimers about sensible financial management, consideration of your available floor space, and the desirability of recyclable packaging.
  • (13) He added that the university which contributed £25m towards the school had “squandered money on a frippery”.
  • (14) If the Guardian means what it says then it is a different sort of politics – but it will involve not the fripperies of parliamentary constitutional change, but a substantial shift of decision-making and a new agenda which really does reconnect people with the political process.
  • (15) Tron features three chords; the next track, Visions of Load, dispenses with such extraneous fripperies and has only two.
  • (16) Women’s clothes are always frippery, luxury and always deemed unsuitable by someone, somewhere.
  • (17) During the day, many African immigrants are walking on the streets of Prato selling frippery.

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