furbelow

Corruption of falbala; first attested in the late 1600s or early 1700s. Not related to fur.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈfəː.bɪ.ləʊ/, /ˈfəː.bə.ləʊ/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈfɚ.bɪ.loʊ/, /ˈfɚ.bə.loʊ/

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furbelow (plural furbelows)

1. A frill, flounce, or ruffle, as on clothing; a decorative piece of fabric, especially one gathered or pleated as into a ruffle, etc.
   • 1839, Frances Trollope, chapter I, in The Widow Barnaby. [...] In Three Volumes, volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], OCLC 465583499, pages 24–25:

     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.

   • 1863, John George Wood, The Illustrated Natural History, page 745,

     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.

   • 1964, E. J. H. Corner, The Life of Plants, 2002, University of Chicago Press, page 76,

     Each plant has several oarweed fronds on the top of a flat stem, well adapted to swaying in one direction but rigid in the other; along the rigid edges, where the water flows and eddies, develop the wavy furbelows.

2. A small, showy ornamentation.
   • 1954, Alexander Alderson, chapter 4, in The Subtle Minotaur‎:

     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.

furbelow (third-person singular simple present furbelows, present participle furbelowing, simple past and past participle furbelowed)

1. (transitive) To adorn with a furbelow; to ornament.
   • 1838 (date written)​, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “(please specify the page)”, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, OCLC 1000392275, pages 224–225:

     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.

• befurbelowed