foppery

plural fopperies

1. countableuncountableThe dress or actions of a fop.

   And it is by their fopperies and their frivolities that we know that their sinister philosophy is sincere; in their lights and garlands and ribbons we read their indwelling despair.

   1902, G.K. Chesterton, Twelve Types

2. countableuncountableStupidity.

   Still, still the secret presses; The nearing clouds draw down; The crimson morning flames into The fopperies of the town.

   1867, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Poems

   2 more examples

   This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, / when we are sick in fortune,–often the surfeit / of our own behavior,–we make guilty of our / disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as / if we were villains by necessity; fools by / heavenly compulsion […]

   c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], lines 118–122

   The energies of his mind led him to despise the fopperies of idolatry; and he found the Christians, in the most unfavourable situation, torn into innumerable parties, by the sectaries of Athanasius, Arius, Eutyches, Nestorius.

   1783, William Godwin, Four Early Pamphlets