apparel

Pluralapparels

Formsapparels

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Clothing, especially the items people wear on the body.

   The company designs athletic apparel for professional runners.

   Guests must wear formal apparel to the evening reception.

   Similarclothing, clothes, attire, wear, garments

   Note

   Behind every meaning of the word stands Old French apareillier. English also took in parrel from it, so the two words are doublets: one French word that entered English twice. In the clothing meaning it runs from John Denham's "fresh in his new apparel" of 1636 to the language of trade and ceremony. It is mostly a mass noun; the plural apparels belongs chiefly to the embroidered vestment panel.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To dress or clothe someone; to attire.

   Servants would apparel the queen in silk before each audience.

   The costume team apparels each actor in period dress.

   Similardress, clothe, attire, robe, garb

   Oppositeundress, strip, unclothe

   Note

   The verb is most often met as a past participle: "gorgeously appareled" in the Bishops' Bible of 1568, or a baron "appareled after the Turkish fashion" in Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper. The spelling divides by region. American usage writes appareled and appareling, while British usage doubles the l in apparelled and apparelling. The person is appareled in a garment or after a fashion.

3. 3
   nounfigurativelycountable or uncountable

   The outward aspect, guise, or form in which something appears.

   Autumn clothed the valley in the golden apparel of turning leaves.

   His kind words were merely the apparel of a selfish plan.

   Similarguise, garb, cloak, mantle

   Note

   Here clothing becomes a metaphor for the outward form that something wears. Richard Steele, writing in 1709, has virtue and religion appear "in the natural apparel of simplicity and beauty." The construction is usually the apparel of something or in the apparel of something. Because apparel is put on, the figure can suggest a fitting expression or a disguise laid over what lies beneath.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To dress something with external ornaments; to cover it with decoration.

   Craftsmen apparel the shrine with gold leaf and carved panels.

   The decorators appareled the ballroom with garlands of ivy.

   Similaradorn, decorate, deck, bedeck, embellish

   Note

   Decoration takes the place of clothing in this use, and the object is a thing or a place rather than a person: trees, a garden, a shrine. The construction marks the difference. The ornament follows with, as in "trees appareled with flowers," whereas a dressed person is appareled in robes. The tone is literary, and the verb is most often used as a participle describing a scene.

5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To furnish something with equipment; to fit it out for use.

   Shipwrights apparel the vessel with masts, sails, and rigging.

   The expedition appareled its base camp with radios and generators.

   Similarequip, outfit, furnish, fit, rig

   Note

   Equipping rather than dressing is the work of the verb here, and it is the action behind a ship's apparel. Its typical object is a vessel or an expedition. It often takes an infinitive of purpose, as in "ships appareled to fight," where the fitting-out is aimed at a particular task.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A small ornamental piece of embroidery worn on albs and certain other church vestments.

   The sacristan repaired the worn apparel on the deacon's alb.

   Medieval albs often featured apparels at the cuffs and lower hem.

   Note

   In church embroidery the word names a single object, an ornamental panel sewn onto an alb or similar vestment, usually at the hem or cuffs. Unlike the clothing meaning, it is always countable: a vestment carries one apparel or several apparels. Readers should take care not to read "the apparels on the alb" as garments.

7. 7
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The equipment of a ship, such as its masts, sails, rigging, anchors, and guns.

   The inventory listed the vessel's apparel down to the last coil of rope.

   Salvagers recovered the wreck's apparel from the seabed.

   Similarequipment, gear

   Note

   A word from the ledger and the law court rather than the deck: the fittings reckoned apart from the hull, and often inventoried separately when a vessel is sold or salvaged. Travis Twiss's Black Book of the Admiralty (1871) groups ship's apparel with the other necessaries that merchants may buy during a voyage. It usually travels with a possessive, ship's or vessel's apparel, and its Old French source, apareillier, also gave English the doublet parrel.

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