Definition of "fringe"

The walls were hung with blue silk, edged with silver fringe; and the closely-drawn blue velvet curtains swept the ground.

1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), page 118

the confines of grace and the fringes of repentance

1651–1653, Jer[emy] Taylor, ΕΝΙΑΥΤΟΣ [Eniautos]. A Course of Sermons for All the Sundays of the Year. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Richard Royston […], published 1655

Dos Santos, who has often been on the fringes at Spurs since moving from Barcelona, whipped in a fantastic cross that Pavlyuchenko emphatically headed home for his first goal of the season.

2011 September 29, Jon Smith, “Tottenham 3 - 1 Shamrock Rovers”, in BBC Sport‎

Moreover, although a number of lines penetrate to the fringes of the English Lake District, this is the only one which actually passes through it.

1961 October, ""Voyageur"", “The Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith Railway”, in Trains Illustrated, page 598

In a few minutes Mrs. Athelny appeared. She had taken her hair out of the curling pins and now wore an elaborate fringe.

1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “Chapter LXXXVIII”, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company

Fayne in the photograph had a fringe, hair frizzed over hidden ears, sleeves over-ornate, the whole thing out of keeping.

1981, Hilda Doolittle, HERmione‎, page 155

Ingeborg knew she wasn′t ready for fringes or short hair like some of the women she′d seen, and she hoped her daughter wasn′t either.“No.” Astrid′s tone dismissed Sophie and the fringe as she galloped off to a new topic.

2007, Lauraine Snelling, Sophie's Dilemma‎, page 16

Set against the seductive visual and textual imagery of these soft-focus fantasy worlds, the stock list details offer the reader a very real solution to achieving the look themselves, ‘Hair, including coloured fringes (obtainable from Joseph, £3.50) by Paul Nix’ (Baker 1972a: 68).

2009, Geraldine Biddle-Perry, Sarah Cheang, Hair: Styling, Culture and Fashion, page 231

All the fringe people thought it was such a good house, ingenious in fact, and erected similar makeshift housing for themselves.

2006, Alexis Wright, Carpentaria, Giramondo, published 2012, page 20

So was the cellist Charlotte Moorman, muse to Nam June Paik and proactivist champion of all things fringe.

2015 September 7, Holland Cotter, “Exhibitions Where Moral Force Trumps Market Forces”, in New York Times‎

[…] yonder cloudThat rises upward always higher,⁠And onward drags a labouring breast,⁠And topples round the dreary west,A looming bastion fringed with fire.

1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], canto XV, page 24

Purple bonnets fringed soft, pink, querulous faces on pillows in bath chairs.

1922, Virginia Woolf, chapter 2, in Jacob's Room