fringe

From Middle English frenge, from Old French frenge, from Vulgar Latin *frimbia, a metathesis of Latin fimbriae (“fibers, threads, fringe”, plural), of uncertain origin. Compare German Franse and Danish frynse. Eclipsed native Middle English fnæd (“fringe”), Middle English byrd (“fringe”), Middle English fasel (“fringe”) from Old English fæs (“fringe”), and Old English fnæs (“fringe”). Doublet of fimbria.

• (General American, Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /fɹɪnd͡ʒ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪndʒ

fringe (plural fringes)

1. A decorative border.

   the fringe of a picture

   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 118:

     The walls were hung with blue silk, edged with silver fringe; and the closely-drawn blue velvet curtains swept the ground.

   1. (by extension) A border or edging.
      • 2020 March 5, Tom Lamont, “The invisible city: how a homeless man built a life underground”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

        He walked up the heath’s western edge, beside a fringe of scrub where hogweed grew in tangles and brambles rose taller than him.

2. (also figurative) A marginal or peripheral part.

   Synonyms: edge, periphery

   • 1651–1653, Jer[emy] Taylor, ΕΝΙΑΥΤΟΣ [Eniautos]. A Course of Sermons for All the Sundays of the Year. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Richard Royston […], published 1655, →OCLC:

     the confines of grace and the fringes of repentance

   • 2011 September 29, Jon Smith, “Tottenham 3 - 1 Shamrock Rovers”, in BBC Sport‎^[2]:

     Dos Santos, who has often been on the fringes at Spurs since moving from Barcelona, whipped in a fantastic cross that Pavlyuchenko emphatically headed home for his first goal of the season.

3. A group of people situated on the periphery of a larger community.
   • 1955, J. D. Salinger, “Franny”, in Franny and Zooey, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, published 1991, →ISBN, page 10:

     About an hour later, the two were sitting at a comparatively isolated table in a restaurant called Sickler’s, downtown, a highly favored place among, chiefly, the intellectual fringe of students at the college—the same students, more or less, who, had they been Yale or Harvard men, might rather too casually have steered their dates away from Mory’s or Cronin’s.

   1. (also attributive) Those members of a political party, or any social group, holding extremist or unorthodox views.

      a fringe group of the party

4. The periphery of an area, especially a town or city.

   Synonym: outskirts

   He lives on the fringe of London.

   • 1961 October, ""Voyageur"", “The Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith Railway”, in Trains Illustrated, page 598:

     Moreover, although a number of lines penetrate to the fringes of the English Lake District, this is the only one which actually passes through it.

   1. (Australia) Used attributively with reference to Aboriginal people living on the edge of towns etc.
      • 2006, Alexis Wright, Carpentaria, Giramondo, published 2012, page 20:

        All the fringe people thought it was such a good house, ingenious in fact, and erected similar makeshift housing for themselves.

5. (UK) Synonym of bangs: hair hanging over the forehead, especially a hairstyle where it is cut straight across.

   Her fringe is so long it covers her eyes.

   • 1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “Chapter LXXXVIII”, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC:

     In a few minutes Mrs. Athelny appeared. She had taken her hair out of the curling pins and now wore an elaborate fringe.

   • 1981, Hilda Doolittle, HERmione‎^[3], page 155:

     Fayne in the photograph had a fringe, hair frizzed over hidden ears, sleeves over-ornate, the whole thing out of keeping.

   • 2007, Lauraine Snelling, Sophie's Dilemma‎^[4], page 16:

     Ingeborg knew she wasn′t ready for fringes or short hair like some of the women she′d seen, and she hoped her daughter wasn′t either.
     “No.” Astrid′s tone dismissed Sophie and the fringe as she galloped off to a new topic.

   • 2009, Geraldine Biddle-Perry, Sarah Cheang, Hair: Styling, Culture and Fashion, page 231:

     Set against the seductive visual and textual imagery of these soft-focus fantasy worlds, the stock list details offer the reader a very real solution to achieving the look themselves, ‘Hair, including coloured fringes (obtainable from Joseph, £3.50) by Paul Nix’ (Baker 1972a: 68).

6. (physics) A light or dark band formed by the diffraction of light.

   interference fringe

7. Non-mainstream theatre.

   The Fringe

   Edinburgh Fringe

   Adelaide Fringe

8. (botany) The peristome or fringe-like appendage of the capsules of most mosses.
9. (golf) The area around the green
10. (television, radio) A daypart that precedes or follows prime time.

fringe (comparative more fringe or fringer, superlative most fringe or fringest)

1. Outside the mainstream.

   Synonyms: alternative, nonmainstream, (informal) fringy

   • 2015 September 7, Holland Cotter, “Exhibitions Where Moral Force Trumps Market Forces”, in New York Times‎^[5]:

     So was the cellist Charlotte Moorman, muse to Nam June Paik and proactivist champion of all things fringe.

fringe (third-person singular simple present fringes, present participle fringing, simple past and past participle fringed)

1. (transitive) To decorate with fringe.
   • 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, Canto XV, page 24:

     [Y]onder cloud / That rises upward always higher, / ⁠And onward drags a labouring breast, / ⁠And topples round the dreary west, / A looming bastion fringed with fire.

   • 1887, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, “The Frost King and How the Fairies Conquered Him”, in Lulu’s Library, volume II, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC, page 10:

     Presently she saw the King's palace. Pillars of ice held up the roof fringed with icicles, which would have sparkled splendidly if there had been any sun.

2. (transitive) To serve as a fringe.
   • 1922, Virginia Woolf, chapter 2, in Jacob's Room:

     Purple bonnets fringed soft, pink, querulous faces on pillows in bath chairs.

• Finger, finger