fringe
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /fɹɪnd͡ʒ/
rhymes: -ɪndʒ
Forms: form: fringes
Etymology: From Middle English frenge, from Old French frenge, from Vulgar Latin *frimbia, a metathesis of Latin fimbriae (“fibers, threads, fringe”, plural), of uncertain origin. Compare German Franse and Danish frynse. Displaced native Middle English fnæd (“fringe”), Middle English byrd (“fringe”), Middle English fasel (“fringe”) from Old English fæs (“fringe”), and Old English fnæs (“fringe”). Doublet of fimbria.
Senses: examples: text: the fringe of a picture
text: The walls were hung with blue silk, edged with silver fringe; and the closely-drawn blue velvet curtains swept the ground.
ref: 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 118:
glosses: A decorative border.
examples: text: He walked up the heath’s western edge, beside a fringe of scrub where hogweed grew in tangles and brambles rose taller than him.
ref: 2020 March 5, Tom Lamont, “The invisible city: how a homeless man built a life underground”, in The Guardian:
glosses: A decorative border.
A border or edging.
examples: text: the confines of grace and the fringes of repentance
ref: 1651–1653, Jer[emy] Taylor, ΕΝΙΑΥΤΟΣ [Eniautos]. A Course of Sermons for All the Sundays of the Year. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Richard Royston […], published 1655, →OCLC:
text: Dos Santos, who has often been on the fringes at Spurs since moving from Barcelona, whipped in a fantastic cross that Pavlyuchenko emphatically headed home for his first goal of the season.
ref: 2011 September 29, Jon Smith, “Tottenham 3 - 1 Shamrock Rovers”, in BBC Sport:
synonyms: edge
periphery
glosses: A marginal or peripheral part.
examples: text: About an hour later, the two were sitting at a comparatively isolated table in a restaurant called Sickler’s, downtown, a highly favored place among, chiefly, the intellectual fringe of students at the college—the same students, more or less, who, had they been Yale or Harvard men, might rather too casually have steered their dates away from Mory’s or Cronin’s.
ref: 1955, J. D. Salinger, “Franny”, in Franny and Zooey, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, published 1991, →ISBN, page 10:
glosses: A group of people situated on the periphery of a larger community.
examples: text: a fringe group of the party
glosses: A group of people situated on the periphery of a larger community.
Those members of a political party, or any social group, holding extremist or unorthodox views.
examples: text: He lives on the fringe of London.
text: Moreover, although a number of lines penetrate to the fringes of the English Lake District, this is the only one which actually passes through it.
ref: 1961 October, ""Voyageur"", “The Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith Railway”, in Trains Illustrated, page 598:
synonyms: outskirts
glosses: The periphery of an area, especially a town or city.
examples: text: All the fringe people thought it was such a good house, ingenious in fact, and erected similar makeshift housing for themselves.
ref: 2006, Alexis Wright, Carpentaria, Giramondo, published 2012, page 20:
synonyms: outskirts
glosses: The periphery of an area, especially a town or city.
Used attributively with reference to Aboriginal people living on the edge of towns etc.
examples: text: Her fringe is so long it covers her eyes.
text: In a few minutes Mrs. Athelny appeared. She had taken her hair out of the curling pins and now wore an elaborate fringe.
ref: 1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “Chapter LXXXVIII”, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC:
text: Fayne in the photograph had a fringe, hair frizzed over hidden ears, sleeves over-ornate, the whole thing out of keeping.
ref: 1981, Hilda Doolittle, HERmione, page 155:
text: Ingeborg knew she wasn′t ready for fringes or short hair like some of the women she′d seen, and she hoped her daughter wasn′t either.
“No.” Astrid′s tone dismissed Sophie and the fringe as she galloped off to a new topic.
ref: 2007, Lauraine Snelling, Sophie's Dilemma, page 16:
text: Set against the seductive visual and textual imagery of these soft-focus fantasy worlds, the stock list details offer the reader a very real solution to achieving the look themselves, ‘Hair, including coloured fringes (obtainable from Joseph, £3.50) by Paul Nix’ (Baker 1972a: 68).
ref: 2009, Geraldine Biddle-Perry, Sarah Cheang, Hair: Styling, Culture and Fashion, page 231:
glosses: Synonym of bangs: hair hanging over the forehead, especially a hairstyle where it is cut straight across.
synonyms: word: bangs
extra: hair hanging over the forehead, especially a hairstyle where it is cut straight across
examples: text: interference fringe
topics: natural-sciences
physical-sciences
physics
glosses: A light or dark band formed by the diffraction of light.
examples: text: The Fringe
text: Edinburgh Fringe
text: Adelaide Fringe
glosses: Non-mainstream theatre.
topics: biology
botany
natural-sciences
glosses: The peristome or fringe-like appendage of the capsules of most mosses.
topics: golf
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: The area around the green
topics: broadcasting
media
radio
television
glosses: A daypart that precedes or follows prime time.
Derived terms: befringe
defringe
donkey fringe
fringe benefit
fringecup
fringe dweller
fringefan
fringehead
fringeless
fringelet
fringelike
fringepod
fringer
fringe time
fringe-toed lizard
fringe tree
Fringeverse
fringeworthy
fringie
fringy
hoary fringe moss
interfringe
lunatic fringe
Newgate fringe
nonfringe
rurban fringe
underfringe
vortex fringe
woolly fringe moss