word history: Paraphernalia is a Latin word (from Greek parapherna ‘property apart from a dowry’), which in ancient Rome referred to the property retained by a woman after her marriage, excluding that which passed to her husband. In English and Scottish law, until the Married Women's Property Acts (from 1870), paraphernalia specifically denoted a wife's personal belongings such as clothing and jewellery. Through association with small personal belongings the word began to take on its modern meaning in the 18th century.