finery

Etymology

noun

  1. (obsolete) Fineness; beauty.
  2. (countable) Ornament; decoration; especially, excessive decoration; showy clothes; jewels.
    The city also shone through the luxury of the higher castes: in the fineries of their dress, the rich manner of their living, their many servants, silver table services, and showy furnishings. 1980, John A. Crow, The Epic of Latin America
  3. fine point; minute characteristic
    the translator should master the language he translates from as thoroughly as his mother tongue, knowing all its fineries 2020, Lieven D’hulst, Kaisa Koskinen, Translating in Town
  4. (ironworking) A charcoal hearth or furnace for the conversion of cast iron into wrought iron, or into iron suitable for puddling.
    In front of the finery hearth in which the sow is melted down again, the finer is working with a long iron bar called a ringer (from French 'ringard') with which he keeps the molten iron in motion by stirring, an essential stage in the process of refining. 1957, H.R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, page 160

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