If
I were to enumerate my favourite sounding words paraphernalia would be on that list.
It is a noun meaning miscellaneous
articles, especially the equipment needed for a particular activity; trappings
associated with a particular institution or activity (often such as are
regarded as superfluous).
Its
origins are as a legal word and in the mid-17th century it meant those
articles of personal property which the law allowed a married woman to keep,
and, to a certain extent, deal with as her own.
i.e. not a lot!!
The
Latin word parapherna meant, in Roman
law meant a wife’s articles over and above her dowry – which remained her husband’s. In the 18th century that word too
came into English law to mean the same thing – the wife’s belongings that hadn’t
come as her dowry.
