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garb

noun, verb — 6 senses

garb

noun

/ɡɑː(ɹ)b/

Etymology From Middle French garbe ("graceful outline, silhouette"; > Modern French galbe), from Italian garbo (“grace, elegance”), from Germanic (compare Old High German garwi, garawi (“dress, equipment, preparation”), Middle High German gerwe (“outfitting, jewelry, clothing, robe, regalia”), modern German Gärbe, Gerbe and English gear), ultimately from Frankish *garwijan (“to prepare”), from Proto-Germanic *garwijaną (“to prepare”).

1

Fashion, style of dressing oneself up.

2

A type of dress or clothing.

  • 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.1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
3

Figuratively A guise, external appearance.

  • You thought, because he could not speak English in the native garb, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel.1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:
Derived terms
garbless, nature's garb

garb

verb

Etymology From Middle French garbe ("graceful outline, silhouette"; > Modern French galbe), from Italian garbo (“grace, elegance”), from Germanic (compare Old High German garwi, garawi (“dress, equipment, preparation”), Middle High German gerwe (“outfitting, jewelry, clothing, robe, regalia”), modern German Gärbe, Gerbe and English gear), ultimately from Frankish *garwijan (“to prepare”), from Proto-Germanic *garwijaną (“to prepare”).

1

To dress in garb.

garb

noun

Etymology From Middle English garbe, from Old French garbe, variant of jarbe; akin to German Garbe. Doublet of gerbe.

1

Government, Heraldry, Hobbies, Lifestyle, Monarchy, Nobility, Politics A wheatsheaf.

2

A measure of arrows in the Middle Ages.

  • Yorkshire supplied 500 bows, and 580 garbs of arrows, 360 of which had iron heads pointed with steel.1957, H. R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, page 118:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.

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