dowdy vs frou-frou

dowdy

adj
  • Plain and unfashionable in style or dress. 

  • Lacking stylishness or neatness; shabby. 

verb
  • To press the crust into the filling during baking, to allow the juices to caramelize on top. 

noun
  • A plain or shabby person. 

frou-frou

adj
  • Highly ornamented, overly elaborate; excessively girly. 

  • Liable to create the sound of rustling cloth, similar to 19th-century dresses. 

  • Unimportant, silly, useless. 

verb
  • To move with the sound of rustling dresses. 

noun
  • A rustling sound, particularly the rustling of a large silk dress. 

How often have the words dowdy and frou-frou occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )