garment

Etymology

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.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɡɑɹ.mənt/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɡɑː.mənt/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: gar‧ment

Noun

garment (plural garments)

1. A single item 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.

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) Short for temple garment.

Verb

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

1. (transitive) To clothe in a garment.

Further reading

• “garment”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “garment”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “garment”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

• margent

Noun

garment

1. Alternative form of garnement