garment - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Middle English garment, garement, garnement, from Old French garnement, guarnement, from Old French garnir, guarnir (“to protect, fortify, clothe, garnish, adorn”), from Frankish *warnijan (“to ward off, refuse, deny”). More at English garnish.

garment (plural garments)

  1. A single article of clothing.
    • 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
      This new-comer was a man who in any company would have seemed striking. […] Indeed, all his features were in large mold, like the man himself, as though he had come from a day when skin garments made the proper garb of men.
    • 2025 October 21, Rose George, “‘I knew in my head we were dying’: the last voyage of the Scandies Rose”, in The Guardian‎[1]:
      The captain did a safety drill. This covered where the emergency position-indicating radio beacon (EPIRB) was located, how to make a mayday call, and where the fire extinguishers were. A crew member demonstrated how to put on an immersion suit. These survival suits are waterproof full-body garments with a hood and integral three-finger gloves and boots. They are bulky and hard to get on but far more likely to save your life in cold water than a lifejacket.
  2. (figurative) The visible exterior in which a thing is invested or embodied.
    • 2017, Velvel Pasternak, Behind the Music, Stories, Anecdotes, Articles and Reflections, page 241:
      The highest state in which the soul completely casts away its garment of flesh and becomes a disembodied spirit.
  3. (Mormonism) Ellipsis of temple garment.

single item of clothing

garment (third-person singular simple present garments, present participle garmenting, simple past and past participle garmented)

  1. (transitive) To clothe in a garment.

garment

  1. alternative form of garnement

Categories: