Accoutrement

WORD OF THE DAY

accoutrement / uh-KOO-truh-munt / noun

Definition

1a: equipment, trappings 

1b: a soldier's outfit usually not including clothes and weapons — usually used in plural

1c: an accessory item of clothing or equipment — usually used in plural

2: an identifying and often superficial characteristic or device — usually used in plural

Examples

The little closet was cluttered with belts and scarves and other accoutrements of use to a fashion-conscious teenager.

"Tour a contemporary American college campus and the guide will apologize for anything without the accoutrements of a yuppie condo. Stainless steel appliances and granite countertops became necessary to learning linear algebra while I wasn't looking." 

— Elizabeth Lewis Pardoe, Inside Higher Ed (insidehighered.com), 23 July 2017

Did You Know?

Accoutrement and its relative accoutre, a verb meaning "to provide with equipment or furnishings" or "to outfit," have been appearing in English texts since the 16th century. Today both words have variant spellings—accouterment and accouter. Their French ancestor, accoutrer, descends from an Old French word meaning "seam" and ultimately traces to the Latin word consuere, meaning "to sew together." 

You probably won't be too surprised to learn that consuere is also an ancestor of couture, a word referring to the business of making fashionable clothes, as well as to the clothes themselves.