FULL-DRESS • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Full-dress

... was delivered without notes (having evidently been learnt by heart), in rather a monotonous way; with a sort of little action, all confined to a slight movement of the hands and flipping of the fingers.... The Archbishop is, I am told, very bigoted. He did not come to dinner yesterday (a grand full-dress dinner given in my honour), and some say it was because of my being a heretic. I take it I was in error yesterday in speaking of the Spanish system of compelling conformity of belief as necessarily beginning in harshness. I fancy the monks ...

— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin