finery

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfaɪnəɹi/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

finery (countable and uncountable, plural fineries)

1. (obsolete) Fineness; beauty.
2. (countable) Ornament; decoration; especially, excessive decoration; showy clothes; jewels.
   • 1980, John A. Crow, The Epic of Latin America:

     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.

3. fine point; minute characteristic
   • 2020, Lieven D’hulst, Kaisa Koskinen, Translating in Town:

     the translator should master the language he translates from as thoroughly as his mother tongue, knowing all its fineries

4. (ironworking) A charcoal hearth or furnace for the conversion of cast iron into wrought iron, or into iron suitable for puddling.
   • 1957, H.R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, page 160:

     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.

Related terms

• fine

Translations

fineness — see fineness

excessive decoration, showy clothes, jewels

• Bulgarian: премяна (bg) f (premjana), натруфеност (bg) f (natrufenost)
• Czech: paráda f
• Finnish: kruusaus (decoration), hepenet (fi) pl (clothes), helyt (fi) pl (jewels)
• Maori: whakapaipai
• Russian: убранство (ru) m (ubranstvo)
• Swedish: stass (sv) c

charcoal hearth

• Bulgarian: пещ за рафиниране f (pešt za rafinirane)
• Czech: pudlovací pec

See also

• (charcoal hearth): refinery