Definitions

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

  • noun Clothing; garments.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun That in which one is arrayed or clad; clothing; vesture; formerly sometimes, in the plural, garments.
  • noun Synonyms Clothes, dress, attire, habiliments, garb, costume, array. These words are all in current use, while raiment and vesture have a poetic or antique sound.

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

  • noun Clothing in general; vesture; garments; -- usually singular in form, with a collective sense.
  • noun R. or Obs. An article of dress.

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

  • noun archaic or literary Clothing, garments, dress, material.

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

  • noun especially fine or decorative clothing
  • verb provide with clothes or put clothes on

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, short for araiment, from Old French areement, array, from areer, arrayer, to array; see array.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Aphetized from array +‎ -ment.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Balthier: "Ah, the prison depository of wrested relics and raiments."

    Vaan: "So our stuff is in here?"

    Balthier: "That's what I said."

    - Final Fantasy XII

    January 25, 2009

  • "As soon as it was dawn Telemachus rose from his bed. He put on his raiment, bound his sandals on his feet, hung his sharp sword across his shoulder, and took in his hand a spear of bronze."

    - Padraic Colum, 'The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy'.

    September 19, 2009

  • Raiment is well used in Chapter XXII of "The Return of Dr Fu-Manchu" by Sax Rohmer.

    March 3, 2015

  • I initially "ran into" this word raiment when reading Bible scripture and loved it so now I will be using it more often as it's so much more interesting & poetic than simply saying "clothes"!

    January 18, 2022