accoutrement
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: derivation
Topics: government
military
politics
war
Etymology: Probably partly from Middle French accoustrement, acoustrement, acoutrement (French accoutrement), from accoustrer, from Old French acostrer (“arrange, sew up”), and partly from accoutre + -ment. First attested in the 1540s.
Base: accoutre
Affixes: -ment
Inflected forms:
form: accoutrements
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: accouterment
pos: noun
tags: alternative
US
alternative
Senses:
gloss: A soldier's equipment, other than weapons and uniform.
pos: noun
tags: in-plural
examples: Thus One / Jovial his Mate bespoke; O Friend, observe, / How gay with all th'Accoutrements of War / The Britons come, with Gold well fraught they come
Three thousand six hundred of the best fighting men, with complete accoutrement; with cannoneers even, and cannon!
He [Manolo] was supposed to have left Spain while he was doing his military service, that is to say he was in the cavalry and he went across the border, and sold his horse and his accoutrement, and so had enough money to come to Paris and be a sculptor.
gloss: An article of clothing or equipment, in particular when used as an accessory.
pos: noun
tags: in-plural
examples: To me ſhe's married, not vnto my cloathes: / Could I repaire what ſhe will weare in me, / As I can change theſe poore accoutrements, / 'Twere well for Kate, and better for my ſelfe.
While one of these loiterers showed the red skin and wild accouterments of a native of the woods, the other exhibited, […]
[H]is clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and sober fabric, were enormously too large for him in every measurement—the trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep them from the ground, the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the collar sprawling wide upon his shoulders. Strange to relate, this ludicrous accoutrement was far from moving me to laughter.
And then from beyond the blank wall beside which I lay I heard the shuffling of feet, the snarling of grim beasts, the clank of metal accouterments, and the heavy breathing of a man.
A little ship, with oars and food / and little dishes, and all accoutrements / fitting and ready for the departing soul.
An essential accoutrement to participation in the daily grind of New York is a briefcase, and any self-respecting office slave eventually amasses a collection, from canvas bags to stylish leather-covered boxes.
They used rock'n'roll as a weapon against itself. With all instruments but guitar, bass, drums, and voice written off as effete, as elitist accoutrements of a professionalist cult of technique, it was music best suited to anger and frustration, […]
Partly for this reason, the washing machine–like dishwashers after the mid-1970s–remained associated in commercial imagery with the domestic accoutrements of the affluent middle class.
It took me a second to identify what they were selling: accoutrements of mourning and/or ancestral worship. Spirit money, yellow bills imprinted with gold foil, was tied with red string and shrink-wrapped in thick stacks.
Now that the face mask has become the essential accoutrement of our lives, the COVID pandemic has laid bare our fundamental need to see whole faces.
gloss: An identifying yet superficial characteristic.
pos: noun
tags: broadly
examples: By the summer of 1964 they had achieved the bigger house on the better street and the familiar accouterments of a family on its way up: the $30,000 a year, the three children for the Christmas card, the picture window, the family room, […]
But musical ancestry aside, the influence to which [Justin] Bieber is most beholden is the current trends in pop music, which means Believe is loaded up with EDM accouterments, […]
gloss: The act of accoutering; furnishing.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
Translations: