bric-a-brac: [19] Bric-a-brac first appears in English in William Thackeray’s The adventures of Philip 1862: ‘all the valuables of the house, including, perhaps, JJ’s bricabrac, cabinets, china, and so forth’. It comes from the obsolete French phrase à bric et à brac ‘at random’; the brac element is a fanciful alteration of bric ‘piece’.
