habited

1. 1
   adjective

   Dressed or clad in clothing of a particular kind.

   The mourners were all habited in black for the funeral procession.

   She arrived at the ball richly habited in velvet and lace.

   Similardressed, clad, attired, clothed, garbed

   Oppositeundressed, unclothed

   Note

   Here any garment will do. The word usually comes with in and the clothes named: habited in black, or habited merely in his light pajamas, as Onward (1869) puts it of a man rushing on deck. It describes how someone happens to be dressed at that moment. Like the religious sense, it has no comparative.

2. 2
   adjective

   Dressed in a habit: the distinctive garment worn by members of a religious order.

   The monks came habited in coarse brown wool, their hoods drawn up against the wind.

   The newly professed nuns appeared habited and veiled before the congregation.

   Similarrobed

   Note

   The religious garment gives this adjective its precise meaning. A habited nun wears the dress of her order; she is not simply clothed. Because a person either wears a habit or does not, the word has no comparative: nobody is "more habited". It sits naturally before a noun, as in a habited nun or habited monks. When the garment is ordinary dress, the word belongs to the general 'clothed' sense.

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of habit.

   The maids habited the bride in white silk on the morning of the wedding.

   He had habited himself in a plain traveler's cloak before slipping out the gate.

   Note

   A regular past form, made by adding -ed, that serves two transitive meanings of the verb. The main one is to clothe someone, often oneself, as in he habited himself in a cloak. The other, now archaic, is to inhabit, so in older writing people who habited a valley lived there rather than dressed it. The same spelling also works as an adjective, as in the general 'clothed' sense.

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