Trousseau

Quick meaning: Trousseau is a noun meaning 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.

Meaning

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.

More Meanings

1. (obsolete) A bundle.

Example Sentences

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.

There is further significance in the transmission of cash and trousseaux. To begin with, they appear in inverse proportion to each other across time, for example trousseaux appear more important in the eighteenth century, whereas by the 1830s they had declined in favour of cash endowments.

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.

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.

Word Forms

• trousseaus
• trousseaux

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include bunch, set, groomswear, corbeille, bridalwear, brideswear.

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