Etymology

Dolly Varden

Today it means: A woman's outfit, briefly fashionable in Britain and America in the late nineteenth century, with a brightly patterned, usually flowered, dress with a polonaise overskirt gathered up and draped over a separate underskirt. Full definition →

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The story

After a lively, coquettish character in Charles Dickens' novel Barnaby Rudge.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.