costume

Pluralcostumes

Formscostumes, costuming, costumed

1. 1
   nouncountable

   An outfit or disguise worn as fancy dress, for parties, performances, or similar occasions.

   He spent weeks sewing a dragon costume for the school play.

   The shop rents out costumes for masquerade balls.

   Similaroutfit, disguise

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The clothing, accessories, and hairstyle that make up a style of dress, especially one typical of a particular country, period, or people.

   The dancers wore the national costume of their homeland.

   Victorian costume often included corsets and layered petticoats.

   Similardress, attire, garb

   Note

   Underneath the clothes is a word for habit. Costume came through French and Italian from Latin consuētūdō, "custom, habit", and it is a doublet of custom and consuetude. A people's costume is, quite literally, its customary dress. That is why the word pairs so readily with national, folk and period. It works as a mass noun (Victorian costume) as well as a count noun (the costumes of the region).

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A set of clothes suited to a particular occasion or time of year.

   The traveler packed a light summer costume for the trip.

   Guests arrived in formal evening costumes.

   Similaroutfit, attire

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To dress or adorn someone with a costume or fitting clothing.

   The wardrobe team will costume the entire cast in period attire.

   She costumed herself as a medieval queen for the festival.

   Similardress, clothe, outfit

   Note

   The verb arrived later than the noun, around 1802, perhaps modeled on French costumer. It is most at home as a past participle followed by in, as when Charlotte Brontë has Mr. Rochester "costumed in shawls, with a turban on his head" in Jane Eyre (1847). It also works reflexively: people costume themselves as someone, which is the verb's way of saying they put on a fancy-dress disguise.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A garment worn for swimming; a swimsuit.

   He wrung out his wet costume after the morning swim.

   She bought a new costume for the beach trip.

   Similarswimsuit

   Note

   A shortening of swimming costume, and a word that gives away where its speaker comes from. In Bruce Brown's The Endless Summer (1966), a narrator used to saying "bathing suits" notices that "down there" people call them "costumes". Where it is the everyday word, the beach context does the work and nobody adds swimming. To other ears, the bare word suggests fancy dress, so swimsuit or bathing suit is the safer choice there.

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