Are dress and frock synonyms in UK?

It's not uncommon to encounter the word "frock" used (mostly by Brits) where I (US) would use "dress" (noun, not verb). Are they synonymous in Britain, or is there a connotative difference ?

Yep they are synonyms to me. I think that some other Commonwealth countries also use frock.

I would say that frock is probably the more informal usage although not necessarily a more informal garment - you would say party frock for example.

No. Frock is a subset of dress. I'm not sure I could quite define frock precisely, but there are a lot of dresses that aren't frocks.

>3 reading_fox:

Interesting.

Chambers has "woman's or girl's dress" as the first definition of frock. I haven't got a full OED to compare, but the Concise OED has the same definition.

So what type of dresses wouldn't you call a frock?

Ball dress, wedding dress, evening dress - anything long and full, unlike a frock which I picture as short sleeved and of shorter length.

The OED isn't much help, as neither entry has been updated since the 1920s, and this kind of vocabulary tends to be rather volatile. It suggests that "dress" is a bit grander ("...made not merely to clothe but also to adorn") and that "frock" tends to be used for garments worn by children and young girls "But in the language of fashionable society the use of frock for ‘dress’ has within the last few years been revived". I think that last one is definitely from the Nancy Mitford era, but still exists residually: there's a sort of inverted snob thing about using an expression like "posh frock".

My first reaction was that a frock is a waisted dress. I'd picture one as having a fuller skirt.

>5 reading_fox:

My sister definitely used frock for her wedding dress. Ball dresses and evening dresses aren't something that is in my (or my family's) experience but I think I have heard frocks for the dresses actresses wear to the Oscars.

Frocks are 'posh dresses', for me.

(those that I wouldn't be seen dead in :))

Isn't 'frock' an ugly sounding word? It feels very old fashioned to me, although I might use it for a child's dress - as was suggested - party frock. I also imagine it as knee length and,curiously, home made. My grandmother used to make the frocks my sister and I wore in the nineteen fiftys!

Tend to be with oldstick in thinking the word is a little old-fashioned and not one I hear being used often.

I think this is a word where usage depends on age, class, and (probably) geographical location. My grandmother, who would be over 100 if alive today, tended to say "frock" rather than "dress". She grew up in rural Oxfordshire.

If I hear the word used today, it tends to be self-consciously/jocularly old-fashioned: "posh frock" for example.

Does "frock coat" indicate the type of dress the word frock originally referred to, I wonder, i.e. below the knee but not full-length (not a gown)?

>12 housefulofpaper: Not really, that was something it evolved into later.

Originally, a frock was a loose, long garment with wide, full sleeves, such as the habit of a monk or priest, commonly belted. (This is the origin of the modern term defrock or unfrock, meaning "to eject from the priesthood".)

The term has been continually applied to various types of clothing, generally denoting a loosely fitted garment:
etc, etc, courtesy of wikipedia

In my experience 'frock' is used as a quasi-jocular term for any dress - and the grander the dress the more irony is implied. Its use also has the overtones of a diminutive. In using it a woman tends to downplay the importance of the dress to her, perhaps with an air of false modesty. However, it is still true to say that 'frock' and 'dress' are synonyms.

The instance that made me ask was an interview with a London journalist who covered Turner awards. She said something like she would submit her copy to her editor and then put on a clean frock to attend the presentation. But the interview was in print and there was neither description nor depiction of said frock.

For some reason thinking of them as synonyms feels like it'll take some getting used to.

>16 drbubbles:
That seems to be a clear example of the sort of self-deprecating use CliffordDorset mentions. A literal interpretation would be that she simply swapped her ink-stained writing dress for one that was fresh from the washing machine, but in real life you would be expected to understand that her transformation for the Turner awards involved something rather more complicated than that, but that she wasn't the sort of person to make a big thing out of it.

frock-coat : a man's double-breasted long skirted coat not cut away in front and now worn chiefly on formal occasions (shorter O.E.D sixth edition 2007) Think Edwardian politicians.

I agree that frocks are a subset of dresses, though of course the terms used to be fairly interchangeable, but it is hard to explain when one would use frock rather than dress. There is something fun and redolent of old fashioned garden parties, perhaps Liberty prints, about the word frock as used now, though one wouldn't mean that such a dress need be worn. I think there's something of the feeling of playing dress-ups - summer frocks, is it a frock do, costume dramas are frock series. Nothing so deadly serious as, say a cocktail dress with all the hard edged corseted Man Men / 1980s overtones of such garments.

Watch out for the word costume being used to denote a suit.

So..... I would think that men of the church being "De-frocked" takes a bit more explaining. Were they "frocked" to begin with? Sounds a bit suspect to me.

>19 Novak: The things that monks wore was a frock. If they were kicked out, they no longer had the right/honor/privilege to wear the frock of their order. Defrocked. Where is the confusion?

>20 .Monkey.: Where is the confusion?

Where is the confusion about men in frocks? Well...you see, men don't usually..

Perhaps you had better ask your mum.

My husband is a C of E vicar and consequently may spend a fair amount of his working day in a long frock, though they are referred to as cassock or cassock alb these days.

We also have "smock". That's what I call the long cotton coat I use to protect my clothing when painting.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smock-frock:
A smock-frock or smock is an outer garment traditionally worn by rural workers, especially shepherds and waggoners, in parts of England and Wales from the early eighteenth century. Today, the word smock refers to a loose overgarment worn to protect one's clothing, for instance by a painter. . .

Smocks originally had "smocking", which is a decorative stitching over gathered cloth.

It is uncertain whether smock-frocks are "frocks made like smocks" or "smocks made like frocks"—that is, whether the garment evolved from the smock, the shirt or underdress of the medieval period, or from the frock, an overgarment of equally ancient origin. What is certain is that the fully developed smock-frock resembles a melding of the two older garments.

>19 Novak:

Please, fellow pedants, don't draw any inferences from comparing 'de-frocked' with 'debriefed'. The clergy might get excited ...

Recently read a 1931 profile of Coco Chanel from the New Yorker, where the author referred to the designer's collection of "frocks."

>26 PhaedraB: Fashion people always talk about frocks.

>25 CliffordDorset: Is debriefing like debagging?

>27 Oandthegang: Fashion people always talk about frocks.

Wait, not forks?
;-)

In the sixties my sisters and mother would normally use the word frock rather than dress.

Well, can you frock a salad?

>30 IreneF: I'm not quite sure, but I think that sounds rude.

>30 IreneF: Well, can you frock a salad?

I suppose so, .. .. .. .. .. eventually.

If Lady Gaga can frock a steak ...

This member has been removed by his post