Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A ruffled, gathered, or pleated border or projection, such as a fabric edge used to trim clothing.
  • noun A projection as of hair, feathers, bone, or cartilage, about the neck of an animal.
  • noun A wrinkling of the edge of a photographic film.
  • noun Informal Something that is desirable but not a necessity; a luxury. synonym: luxury.
  • intransitive verb To make into a ruffle or frill.
  • intransitive verb To add a ruffle or frill to.
  • intransitive verb To become wrinkled along the edge.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The shell of a kind of scallop.
  • To shiver with cold, as a hawk or other bird.
  • noun A shivering with cold, as a bird; the ruffling of a bird's feathers when shivering with cold.
  • To form into a frill; flute or plait: as, to frill a border in a dress.
  • To ornament with frills; as, to frill a child's garment.
  • To become frilled or ruffled.
  • noun A narrow ornamental bordering made of a strip of textile material, of which one edge is gathered and the other left loose, as in a narrow flounce; a ruffle.
  • noun Hence Anything resembling such a border.
  • noun Specifically
  • noun The projecting fringe of hair on the chest of some dogs, as the collie.
  • noun Some fringing part or process of an animal, like a ruffle; a frilling: as, the genital frills of a hydrozoan.
  • noun In hymenomycetous fungi, a superior annulus or ring; an annulus formed of tissue suspended from the apex of the stipe and free at other points, at first forming a membranous covering for the hymenium, but detached as the pileus expands; an armilla.
  • noun In photography, the swelling and loosening of a gelatin film around the edges of a plate. See frill, verb
  • noun An affectation of dress or of manner; an air: usually in the plural: as, he puts on too many frills.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To provide or decorate with a frill or frills; to turn back. in crimped plaits.
  • noun A ruffing of a bird's feathers from cold.
  • noun A ruffle, consisting of a fold of membrane, of hairs, or of feathers, around the neck of an animal.
  • noun A similar ruffle around the legs or other appendages of animals.
  • noun A ruffled varex or fold on certain shells.
  • noun A border or edging secured at one edge and left free at the other, usually fluted or crimped like a very narrow flounce.
  • noun Something superfluous, such as an ornament, or an additional function on a device or in a system not essential to the basic operation. -- Commonly used in the phrase no frills, used adjectively to indicate a fully functional but economical device or service.
  • intransitive verb To shake or shiver as with cold.
  • intransitive verb (Photog.) To wrinkle; -- said of the gelatin film.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A strip of pleated material used as decoration or trim; a ruffle.
  • noun photography A wrinkled edge to a film.
  • noun A luxury.
  • verb To make something into a frill.
  • verb To become wrinkled.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun ornamental objects of no great value
  • noun (paleontology) a bony plate that curves upward behind the skull of many ceratopsian dinosaurs
  • noun an external body part consisting of feathers or hair about the neck of a bird or other animal
  • noun a strip of pleated material used as a decoration or a trim

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

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