raiment

Aphetized from Middle English arayment, borrowed from Anglo-Norman arraiement and Old French areement, from areer (“to array”). See array.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹeɪ.mənt/

  • Audio (Southern England)

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• Rhymes: -eɪmənt

raiment (countable and uncountable, plural raiments)

1. (archaic or literary) Clothing, garments, dress, material.
   • 1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet XXII”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC:

     For all that beauty that doth cover thee
     Is but the seemly raiment of my heart

   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Revelation 4:2–4:

     And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. / And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. / And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.

   • 1866, Algernon Swinburne, Aholibah, lines 11-12:

     Strange raiment clad thee like a bride,
     With silk to wear on hands and feet

   • 1955, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings):

     They were clad in warm raiment and heavy cloaks, and over all the Lady Éowyn wore a great blue mantle of the colour of deep summer-night, and it was set with silver stars about hem and throat.

   • 1958, Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 379:

     Many men, women and children, clothed in bright raiment for the Sabbath, saw with a faint flicker of interest and surprise a very white man on a trishaw, and the driver pedalling with unseemly haste.

   • 2006 December 24, PZ Myers, “The Courtier's Reply”, in Pharyngula‎, archived from the original on 17 February 2012:

     We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion...

• Inter-Am., Reitman, Tremain, antimer, antmire, artemin, matrine, meranti, minaret, trimean