Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a sexually inadequate male; thus as v., to behave in a sexually inadequate manner; the underlying inference is of effeminacy, thus adj. fribbling.

1635		R. Brome Sparagus Garden II ii: As true as I live he fribles with mee sir.
1663		J. Wilson Cheats I iii: A company of fribbles, enough to discredit any honest house in the world.
1675		Head Art of Wheedling 150: An impertinent person, eagerly discoursing the conduct of some amorous Female Conquests, as the Wife of Mr. Fribble.
1675		Fumblers-Hall 7: Alice Allcock: Yet he is no more to me [...] than a straw in the Nostrils of a cow, a very slug, a meer fribble.
1709		‘Phoebe Crackenthorpe’ Female Tatler (1992) (17) 42: Mr. Fribble, Mr Bisket and Mr Nincompoop.
1710		Johnson Love in a Chest I i: Thou Impotent Fribler.
1712		R. Steele in Spectator 288 30 Jan. II 360: They whom my Correspondent calls Male-Coquets, shall hereafter be called Fribblers. A Fribbler is one who professes Rapture and Admiration for the Woman to whom he addresses, and dreads Nothing so much as her Consent.
1749		H. Fitzcotton (trans.) Homer’s Iliad 26: Such jolly kick-and-cuffing men. / One of them could have maul’d, with ease / Ten fribbles of the modern days.
1750		Derby Mercury 1 Feb. 3/1: A Bill will be brought into Parliament [...] to reduce the Numbner of Public Places [...] debauching and corrupting the Morals of the Youth and things of much greater consequence than the pleasing of a Beau, a Fribble or a Flash.
1753		Dict. of Love n.p.: fribble This word signifies one of those ambiguous animals, who are neither male nor female; disclaimed by his own sex, and the scorn of both.
1754		Caledonian Mercury 8 April 1/2: The Sword of State was carried by their Lordships the Earl of Jessamy, and Lord George Fribble.
1768		Gentleman’s Bottle-Companion 5: I start not as tim’rous fribbles have done.
1772		G. Stevens ‘Kissing’ in Songs Comic and Satyrical 68: The love of a fribble at self only aims: / For sots and clowns – class them with beasts.
1781		Hicky’s Bengal Gaz. 23-30 June n.p.: Chutah Pigdanny [...] Hovers about her like an unfledged Cupid oror ‘Fribble in Miss in her Teens’.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Fribble, an effeminate fop, a name borrowed from a celebrated character of that kind, in the farce of Miss in her teens, written by Mr. Garrick.
1791		‘Brother Rook’ Willy Wood & Greedy Grizzle 29: A new extreme Pervades each fribbling fop.
1792		Sporting Mag. Dec. I 176/1: The fribble in office, by blockheads carest.
1804		Sporting Mag. Jan. XXIII 220/1: The funny fribble immediately answered in a fierce tone.
1819		Gent.’s Mag. 7: Dandy [...] is applied to a certain set of men not unlike those formerly denominated Fribbles, whom, instead of supporting the dignity and manliness of their own sex, incline to the delicacy and manners of a female.
1822		D. Carey Life in Paris 226: She was indeed a figure worthy of our hero’s attention, and most unfit to have been matched with such a fribble.
1839		Newcastle Jrnl 25 May 2/5: The hoary-headed fribble [...] will soon find that power sustained by [...] a mere knot of female Court partizans is as baseless as his own intellect.
1840		‘Kissing’ in Facetious Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 252: The love of a fribble at self only aims / [...] /No fibre, no atom, have they in their frames.
1857		C. Kingsley Two Years Ago I 172: Scoutbush clung to any superior man who would take notice of him, and not treat him as the fribble which he seemed.
1859		G.A. Sala Twice Round the Clock 269: The ephemeral brilliance of the fribble Chesterfield.
1885		Newcastle Courant 20 Feb. 2/3: Though an exquisite in dress and manner [he was] by no means a representative of the ‘maccaroni,’ ‘fribbles’ [...] or ‘swells’ of various periods.