I love when the translation mailing list gets pedantic about the meaning of one word. "Is a frock the same as an unfashionable dress?" just got 10 instant replies dissecting "frock". Very entertaining! It varies whether you are in England, the U.S. or Australia. (England: can be used normally. U.S.: oldfashioned word vs. oldfashioned (yet in the sense of vintage, not unfashionable) dress. Oz: jury still out, but leaning towards "unfashionable thing your grandma would wear".
My feeling is that the word is an old-fashioned word, but it does not necessarily mean an old-fashioned dress. So if I said to Minnie, "come and see my new frock," the connotation is not that the dress is old-fashioned - it is that I am being silly for using a somewhat archaic word. It becomes funnier when the dress is something that would make Elizabeth Bennett keel over and die.
My other images of frocks centered around 18th century dresses involving frills, frippery and furbelows. Or possibly some sort of petticoated victorian child's outfit without a fitted waist. It is a word often encountered in bad regency romance novels, where they also must refer to "the ton" and someone's flashing emerald eyes and broughams and the writers just cram in anything that they think of as fitting in that period even if it doesn't. Evelina or E. Bennett didn't have frocks so much as gowns, I am pretty sure.
The other question was: if "frock" is not the right word for an unfashionable dress, what would you call it? (Sack, bag, shapeless bag, ugly dress, rag, house dress... )
Comments