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''raiment'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260125204041-00-⌔

raiment - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

raiment (countable and uncountable, plural raiments)

  • (archaic or literary) Clothing, garments, dress, material.
    • ✤ For all that beauty that doth cover thee
      Is but the seemly raiment of my heart      1
    • ✤ 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.2
    • ✤ Strange raiment clad thee like a bride,
      With silk to wear on hands and feet      3
    • ✤ Whatever the reason for her old-fashioned appearance, certainly the mocking critics who are “making fun” of her dowdy clothes are only proving that their manners are inferior to their raiment.4
    • ✤ 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.5
    • ✤ 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.6
    • ✤ 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…7

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈɹeɪ.mənt/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -eɪmənt

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 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: ↩

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

  3. 1866, Algernon Swinburne, Aholibah, lines 11-12: ↩

  4. 1920 August 12, Helen Decle, “What’s What”, in The Everett Daily Herald, Everett, Wash., →OCLC, page 10, columns 1–2: ↩

  5. 1955, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings): ↩

  6. 1958, Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 379: ↩

  7. 2006 December 24, PZ Myers, “The Courtier’s Reply”, in Pharyngula ‎, archived from the original on 17 February 2012: ↩

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