Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A heavy cloth or leather covering for the leg extending from the instep to the ankle or knee.
  • noun A similar covering of moisture-resistant fabric, used by skiers and hikers.
  • noun An ankle-high shoe with elastic sides.
  • noun An overshoe with a cloth top.
  • noun A tubular collar fitting closely around the neck, often worn by skiers.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To dress with gaiters.
  • noun The dogwood-tree. Now gaiter-tree, gattridge.
  • noun A covering of cloth for the ankle, or the ankle and lower leg, spreading out at the bottom over the top of the shoe; a spatterdash.
  • noun Originally, a kind of shoe, consisting partly of cloth, covering the ankle; now, also, a shoe of similar form, with or without cloth, generally with an insertion of elastic on each side.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To dress with gaiters.
  • noun A covering of cloth or leather for the ankle and instep, or for the whole leg from the knee to the instep, fitting down upon the shoe.
  • noun A kind of shoe, consisting of cloth, and covering the ankle.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A covering of cloth or leather for the ankle and instep; see spats
  • noun A covering cloth or leather for the whole leg from the knee to the instep, fitting down upon the shoe.
  • noun Part of the ecclesiastical garb of a bishop.
  • verb To dress with gaiters.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a cloth covering (a legging) that covers the instep and ankles
  • noun legging consisting of a cloth or leather covering for the leg from the knee to the ankle
  • noun a shoe covering the ankle with elastic gores in the sides

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French guêtre, from Old French guietre, of Germanic origin; see wer- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the French guêtre.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word gaiter.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • neck gaiter makes me think of turkey wattles. I don't think this was in the discussion of WOTY 2020, but it shoulda been, as a mask alternative of people who have sensitive ears, or who only want to nominally comply with mask laws but just keep this around their neck as a scarf.

    July 27, 2022