FINERY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does finery mean? 

• FINERY (noun)
  The noun FINERY has 1 sense:

1. elaborate or showy attire and accessories

  Familiarity information: FINERY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FINERY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Elaborate or showy attire and accessories

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("finery" is a kind of...):

attire; dress; garb (clothing of a distinctive style or for a particular occasion)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "finery"):

Sunday best; Sunday clothes (the best attire you have which is worn to church on Sunday)

 Context examples 

Mr. Bennet protested against any description of finery.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

No, I see no finery about you; nothing but what is perfectly proper.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

She is only nursing Mrs Wallis of Marlborough Buildings; a mere pretty, silly, expensive, fashionable woman, I believe; and of course will have nothing to report but of lace and finery.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

But I am quite in the minority, I believe; few people seem to value simplicity of dress,—show and finery are every thing.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

"Never mind, you've got the tarlaton for the big party, and you always look like an angel in white," said Amy, brooding over the little store of finery in which her soul delighted.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

For, after having been accustomed several months to the sight and converse of this people, and observed every object upon which I cast mine eyes to be of proportionable magnitude, the horror I had at first conceived from their bulk and aspect was so far worn off, that if I had then beheld a company of English lords and ladies in their finery and birth-day clothes, acting their several parts in the most courtly manner of strutting, and bowing, and prating, to say the truth, I should have been strongly tempted to laugh as much at them as the king and his grandees did at me.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

And he was aware that Ruth looked, too, with quick eyes that were timid and mild as a dove's, but which saw, in a look that was a flutter on and past, the working-class girl in her cheap finery and under the strange hat that all working-class girls were wearing just then.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Once more the little room, with its open corner cupboard, and its square-backed chairs, and its angular little staircase leading to the room above, and its three peacock's feathers displayed over the mantelpiece—I remember wondering when I first went in, what that peacock would have thought if he had known what his finery was doomed to come to—fades from before me, and I nod, and sleep.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Miss Tilney drew back directly, and the heavy doors were closed upon the mortified Catherine, who, having seen, in a momentary glance beyond them, a narrower passage, more numerous openings, and symptoms of a winding staircase, believed herself at last within the reach of something worth her notice; and felt, as she unwillingly paced back the gallery, that she would rather be allowed to examine that end of the house than see all the finery of all the rest.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

“I had my choice of the parts,” said Mr. Rushworth; “but I thought I should like the Count best, though I do not much relish the finery I am to have.”

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)