petticoatery

— To do at least the first, it was resolved that we should visit the worthy gentleman en masse, to give him, the opportunity of exercising his hospitlity upon the present occasion, an acceptance of which, as he had an extremely agreeable wife, and some remarkably pretty cousins, we naturally preferred to the male, matter-of-fact dinner at our ostelry, which, however agreeable per se, sank to mortal dulness by comparison, in our then young minds , with the coterie, or more properly the petticoatery, at the castellated mansion of our presumed host.

— We have already at different times tried to deserve well of the world by remonstrating against the errors of petticoatery, and against certain freakish “sports” in the rosebud garden of girls.