Dictionary

fancy dress en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (Australia, UK, uncountable, usually) A costume, disguise to masquerade as something or someone else.
   • And yet here he was, if one could credit one's senses, about to take part in a fancy-dress ball, a form of entertainment notoriously a testing experience for the toughest. And he was attending that fancy-dress ball, mark you--not, like every other well-bred Englishman, as a Pierrot, but as Mephistopheles--this involving, as I need scarcely stress, not only scarlet tights but a pretty frightful false beard. 1934, P. G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves:
   • Royal Mail worker Evette Chapman gathered a team of 12 colleagues to deliver post in fancy dress and raise money for a nurses' charity and patients in Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton. 2020 November 18, “Stop & Examine”, in Rail, page 71:
2. (uncountable, usually) Formalwear.
3. (uncountable, usually) Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see fancy, dress.

Forms

Translations (5)

lb Fueskostüm (disguise to masquerade) · de Karnevalskostüm (disguise to masquerade) · bg маскараден костюм (disguise to masquerade) · cs maškarní kostým (disguise to masquerade) · fi naamiaisasu (disguise to masquerade)