[f. next vb.]
A. sb.
1. A trifling, frivolous fellow, one not occupied in serious employment, a trifler.
1664. J. Wilson, Cheats, I. iii. A Company of Fribbles, enough to discredit any honest House in the World.
1771. J. Giles, Poems, 161.
| A nymph who can for me forgo, | |
| The fop, the fribble, and the beau. |
1865. Merivale, Rom. Emp., VIII. lxiv. 128. The criminals they lash were at least no milksops in crime, no fribbles in vice.
1881. Besant & Rice, Chapl. Fleet, II. iii. You see yonder little fribble, my dear—do not look at him, or it will make him think the better of himself; he is a haberdasher from town, who pretends to be a Templar.
2. A trifling thing; also, a frivolous notion, idea, or characteristic.
1832. W. Stephenson, Gateshead Local Poems, 24.
| And to supply his horse’s rack | |
| He deem’d it but a fribble, | |
| And often at his neighbour’s stack, | |
| At nights he took a nibble. |
1874. Blackie, Self-Culture, 83–4. Let therefore our young men study to make themselves familiar, not with the fribbles, oddities, and monstrosities of humanity, set forth in fictitious narratives, but with the real blood and bone of human heroism which the select pages of biography present.
3. Frivolity, nonsense.
1881. E. Mulford, Republic of God, ii. 31, note. This life is with God. This life, that is not that of fribble or of crime, is not ephemeral, it has a worth that hath no end.
4. Comb., as as fribble-like adj.; fribble-frabble, nonsense.
1822. T. Mitchell, Aristoph., II. 239 (The Wasps).
| He with legs planted wide in this fashion, | |
| Fribble-like, swings his frame. |
1859. Sala, Tw. round Clock (1861), 77. The innumerable whim-whams and fribble-frabble of fashion, elaborately shown, and to their best advantage.
B. adj. Trifling, frivolous, ridiculous.
1798. Brit. Critic, Jan., 96. An instance of the superficial, trivial and frigid manner in which that fribble minister, (Ministre de Boudoir) treated this important branch of administration.
1839. Thackeray, Crit. Rev., Wks. 1886, XXIII. 128. An illustration of some wretched story in some wretched fribble Annual. Ibid. (1840), Catherine, i. Lovely woman!… What lies and fribble nonsense canst thou make us listen to, as they were gospel truth or splendid wit!
Hence Fribbledom, the spirit or behavior of a fribble; Fribbleism, the quality characteristic of a fribble, frivolity.
1758. Phanor, in Goldsmith’s Wks. (ed. Gibbs), IV. 429. He [Shakespear] disdained the fribleism of the French, in adopting the blemishes with equal passion as the beauties of the ancients.
1844. Blackw. Mag., LV. May, 557/2. It happens that the said Lady Sylvester does not like Travels, unless ‘nice little ladylike books of travels,’ such as the Quarterly informed us last year, in a fit of fribbledom, were worthy the neat little crowquills of lady-authors.
