Talk:Frock

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Both frock and frock coat are thorough articles describing items of dress that were considered quite separate by the people who work them (and are so considered by costume historians). - PKM 20:35, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The frock is more the historical precursor of the dress coat or tail coat worn with white tie.

The frock coat emerged later in the 19th century and is quite distinct from the frock in its form and shape.

Just because the 'frock' sounds like the 'frock coat' does little to change the fact that they are quite historically distinct garments irrespective of whatever tenuous historical relationship may exist between them. It would be a severe mistake on historical grounds to merge the two together. If you were to do this you might also insist on merging articles on white tie and the frock on the grounds that tail coats are historically related to the frock. In fact it would make more sense to do this than merge articles on the frock and frock coat. In other languages the names for the frock and the frock coat are quite distinct further demonstrating that the similarity in names is merely coincidental. Sator 10 December 2006 —The preceding Sator comment was added by Sator (talk • contribs) 16:34, 9 December 2006

I have removed the requuset to merge with frock coat since it has been posted since July 2006 with no support. - PKM 18:12, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was surprised that frock contained no mention of it's synonym for dress it is obviously only in British English, the term frock is often used by those couture or high fashion, in a post modern or ironic manner, as it is kind of an old fashioned term, but it's one of those terms that may have started out like that but is now used straight faced, in the likes of UK Vogue. - Yakacm (talk) 10:00, 2 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. 'Dress' is usual in everyday use but one will often hear 'frock'. They are not exact synonyms though, rather 'frock' is a subset of 'dress'. Based purely on my own experience as a user of (British) English I would define frock as something like 'a dress with a loose skirt for daytime wear, the usual length being neither much above nor much below the knee, the use of the word carrying connotations of style or expense'.

Its use in the area of couture or high-fashion may stem from pretentious class-conciousness based upon the early part of the 20th C. when 'ladies' would change for dinner from a frock to a gown, whereas mere 'women' would wear a dress for both and possibly not change at all(!).

DruartG (talk) 22:10, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As an Australian English native speaker, I'm also surprised more hasn't been said on the term being a synonym for dress. It's still a common term. It usually means a simple loose-fit dress, but can be used as a direct synonym. For example, Henry Roth the mentor on season 1 of Project Runway Australia would use the pithy catch phrase of "Don't frock it up!". Belfry (talk) 02:38, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Further, in Australia the expression "to be all frocked up" is an equivalent expression to the more formal "to be dressed to the nines". To "frock up" means to "dress up". See [1], [2], [3] for evidence of frock and dress being used synonymously (both as a noun and verb).

Here's a couple of examples of it's usage in recent media: [4]. From [5] "Fillies in their finery: Girls don summery frocks and fascinators for the occasion, which was deemed a huge success by organisers" (Daily Mail UK paper, but I wonder if it's not a repetition from an Australian writer). Belfry (talk) 03:04, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]