trousseau

Definition

The clothes and linen, etc., that a bride collects or that is given to her for her wedding and married life, especially a traditional or formal set of these.

Etymology

Borrowed from French trousseau, diminutive of trousse (“bundle”).

Example Sentences

• "Trousseaus of German Heiresses.—Despatches from Berlin told recently of the visit to that city of a wealthy German mother and her two daughters. for the purpose of buying trousseaus for the girls who are said to be perhaps the richest heiresses of the world. […] Frau Krupp, widow of the great gunmaker of Essen [Friedrich Alfred Krupp], and her daughters, Bertha and Barbara, have just been here, the object of their visit being to buy the wedding-trousseaus for her daughters."
• "Consequently, having decided to divide her daughter's trousseau into two parts, a lesser and a larger, the Princess eventually consented to have the wedding before Advent."
• "In a study of the trousseau in France, Agnès Fine observes that, regardless of its contents and its value, the trousseau represented an essential in women's lives; through the first half of the twentieth century, at least, it seemed altogether inconceivable to be married without the provision of a trousseau. But while in the sixteenth century it involved the furniture of a bride's bedroom, bit by bit the trousseau was reduced to linen, especially to sheets."

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