habiliment

From Middle English habilement, from Old French habillement (“clothes”).

• (US) IPA^(key): /həˈbɪlɪmənt/

habiliment (plural habiliments)

1. Clothes, especially clothing appropriate for someone's job, status, or to an occasion.
   • ca. 1607, William Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra, Act III, sc. 6:

     She

     In th' habiliments of the goddess Isis

     That day appeared, and oft before gave audience […]

   • 1839, Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

     […] Mrs Crummles was then occupied in exchanging the habiliments of a melodramatic empress for the ordinary attire of matrons in the nineteenth century.

   • 1919, W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, chapter 52

     Bananas with their great ragged leaves, like the tattered habiliments of an empress in adversity, grew close up to the house.

2. Equipment or furnishings characteristic of a place or being; trappings.