bijou

plural bijous · plural bijoux

1. A jewel.
2. A piece of jewelry; a trinket.
3. A small intricate piece of metalwork.

   […]a saucepan on the hob, and a brazen bijou over the fireplace designed for the suspension of a roasting-jack.

   1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter VI, in Great Expectations […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 102

comparative more bijou · superlative most bijou

1. PolariSmall; little.

   You may have vada'd one of our tiny bijou masterpiecettes, heartface.

   1968, Kenneth Horne, Bona Prods (Round the Horne)

   2 more examples

   We, the Sister of Perpetual Indulgence and the Gathered Faithful, do hereby invoke the spirit of our beloved Muffin the Mule, to recognize the bona work of Mr. Derek Jarman in promulgating Universal Joy […] in his bijou masterpiecettes[.]

   1997, Ian Lucas, “The Color of His Eyes: Polari and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence”, in Anna Livia, Kira Hall, editors, Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, page 91

   Polari, used for decades by gay men, actors, and theatre performers and which famously appeared on primetime radio show Round The Horne, has been brought up-to-date with a bijou iPhone appette.

   2012 August 5, Paul, “Bijou Polari Appette pre-varda’d”, in Gay History, archived from the original on 14 Nov 2012

2. Small and elegant.

   2 more examples

   I soon found Briony Lodge. It is a bijou villa, with a garden at the back, but built out in front right up to the road, two stories. Chubb lock to the door. Large sitting-room on the right side, well furnished, with long windows almost to the floor, and those preposterous English window fasteners which a child could open.

   1891, A Scandal in Bohemia

   In small towns like Soldau a small area accommodates the town hall, the church, several miniature squares, a monument to somebody or other, perhaps more than one, all sorts of shops, beerhouses, a post office, a bank, and there may be a bijou park behind wrought-iron railings, then the streets and the town end just as abruptly, and you have scarcely passed the last house when you find a highroad lined with trees stretching before you with a neat grid of precisely demarcated fields on either side.

   1989 [1971], Willetts, H. T., transl., August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, translation of Август 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, →ISBN, page 126

3. Intricate; finely made.