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.

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

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: gar‧ment

garment (plural garments)

1. A single item of clothing.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible,[…] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker,[…], →OCLC, Deuteronomy 22:5:

     The woman ſhall not weare that which pertaineth vnto a man, neither ſhall a man put on a womans garment: foꝛ all that doe ſo, are abomination vnto the Lord thy God.

   • 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.

• See also Thesaurus:clothing

• garnish
• garrison

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

1. (transitive) To clothe in a garment.

• “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.

• margent

garment

1. alternative form of garnement