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

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Middle English ornament, from Old French ornement, from Latin ornamentum (“equipment, apparatus, furniture, trappings, adornment, embellishment”), from ornāre (“to equip, adorn”). The verb is derived from the noun.

ornament (countable and uncountable, plural ornaments)

  1. An element of decoration; that which embellishes or adorns.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:decoration
    • 1864, Alfred Tennyson, “Aylmer’s Field”, in Enoch Arden, &c., London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC, page 51:
      Dust are our frames; and, gilded dust, our pride / Looks only for a moment whole and sound; / Like that long-buried body of the king / Found lying with his urns and ornaments, / Which at a touch of light, an air of heaven, / Slipt into ashes and was found no more.
    • 1919, P. G. Wodehouse, My Man Jeeves:
      I'm a bit short on brain myself; the old bean would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use.
    • 2012 March, Brian Hayes, “Pixels or Perish”, in American Scientist‎[1], volume 100, number 2, archived from the original on 19 February 2013, page 106:
      Drawings and pictures are more than mere ornaments in scientific discourse. Blackboard sketches, geological maps, diagrams of molecular structure, astronomical photographs, MRI images, the many varieties of statistical charts and graphs: These pictorial devices are indispensable tools for presenting evidence, for explaining a theory, for telling a story.
    1. (by extension) Christmas ornament: a Christmas tree decoration.
  2. (music) A musical flourish that is unnecessary to the overall melodic or harmonic line, but serves to decorate that line.
  3. (Christianity, in the plural) The articles used in church services.
  4. (biology) A characteristic that has a decorative function (typically in order to attract a mate)

element of decoration

musical flourish

ornament (third-person singular simple present ornaments, present participle ornamenting, simple past and past participle ornamented)

  1. To decorate.
    We will ornament the windows with trim to make the room seem brighter.
    • 1958 October, “Liverpool to London in 1842”, in Railway Magazine, page 679:
      After this, perhaps, the next most imposing structure in Liverpool is the railway station; it is built of stone, richly ornamented with thirty-six columns of the Corinthian order.
  2. To add to.
    The editor ornamented his plain writing, making it fancier but less clear.
    • 2021 July 12, Nicholas Barber, “The French Dispatch: Four stars for Wes Anderson's latest”, in BBC‎[2]:
      Not a scene goes by that hasn't been ornamented with a split screen, a freeze frame, a caption, a voice-over, a switch between monochrome and colour, or a change of the aspect radio[sic – meaning _ratio_].

to decorate

to add to

Borrowed from Latin ōrnāmentum.

ornament m (plural ornaments)

  1. ornament

From Latin ornamentum.

ornament n (definite singular ornamentet, indefinite plural **ornament or ornamenter, definite plural ornamenta or ornamentene)

  1. an ornament

From Latin ornamentum.

ornament n (definite singular ornamentet, indefinite plural **ornament, definite plural ornamenta)

  1. an ornament

Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥

Polish ornament

Learned borrowing from Latin ōrnāmentum.

ornament m inan

  1. (architecture, art, typography) ornament, adornment
  2. (music) ornament

Borrowed from French ornament, from Latin ornamentum. By surface analysis, orna +‎ -ment.

ornament n (plural ornamente)

  1. ornament

ornament n

  1. an ornament