Definition of "habiliment"
habiliment
noun
plural habiliments
Clothes, especially clothing appropriate for someone's job, status, or to an occasion.
Quotations
Forth came that auncient Lord and aged Queene, / Arayd in antique robes downe to the ground, / And sad habiliments right well beseene; / A noble crew about them waited round / Of sage and sober Peres, all gravely gownd; / Whom farre before did march a goodly band / Of tall young men,° all hable armes to sownd, / But now they laurell braunches bore in hand; / Glad signe of victorie and peace in all their land.
1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, stanza 5
She / In th' habiliments of the goddess Isis / That day appeared, and oft before gave audience […]
c. 1606–1607, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene vi]
Her maid having a taste in dressmaking—to which art she had been an apprentice at Paris, before she entered into Miss Blanche’s service there—was kept from morning till night altering and remodelling Miss Amory’s habiliments; and rose very early and went to bed very late, in obedience to the untiring caprices of her little taskmistress.
1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter XXIV, in The History of Pendennis. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850