Elaborate and costly playthings

The other day found Mrs H and I discussing how so many things become more and more elaborate over time. As if there is nothing at all which cannot be made a little more elaborate than the previous version.


On a chair lay a broken toy, one of those elaborate and costly playthings which serve no purpose but to stunt a child’s imagination.

George Gissing – In the Year of Jubilee (1894)


It applies not only to things, but activities, systems, processes, laws, rules and so on and so on. The curious thing is that we know it, perhaps everyone knows it, but still we elaborate.


Basset was inclined to be rather contemptuous of his half-brother, Lucas, whom he found feverishly engrossed in the same medley of elaborate futilities that had claimed his whole time and energies, such as they were, four years ago, and almost as far back before that as he could remember. It was the contempt of the man of action for the man of activities, and it was probably reciprocated.

H.H. Munro (Saki) - Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914)