garb

1 of 2

noun

ˈgärb 

1

obsolete : fashion, manner

2

a

: a style of apparel

b

: outward form : appearance

garb

2 of 2

verb

garbed; garbing; garbs

transitive verb

: to cover with or as if with clothing

Synonyms

Noun

• costume
• drag
• dress
• getup
• guise
• outfit
• togs

Verb

• apparel
• array
• attire
• bedeck
• caparison
• clothe
• costume
• deck (out)
• do up
• dress
• dress up
• enrobe
• garment
• get up
• gown
• habit
• invest
• rig (out)
• robe
• suit
• tog (up or out)
• toilet
• vesture

Examples of garb in a Sentence

Noun

decided to clothe himself in traditional Scottish garb for the celebration

a fable about personal redemption presented in the garb of a conventional horror story

Verb

firefighters garbed in protective gear

Recent Examples on the Web

Noun

The Michigan head coach, locked into a close first-round game against UC San Diego, couldn’t help but notice that nearly everyone in Ball Arena not in Wolverines garb was rooting against his team. —Sam Blum, New York Times, 26 Mar. 2025

Fieri is front and center on the cover of the special cameo and in his usual garb: black T-shirt, glitzy chain necklaces, sunglasses and bleach-blonde hair. —Sabrina Weiss, People.com, 18 Mar. 2025

Verb

Members of the media garbed in protective uniforms view NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on Nov. 4 2005, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. —Jeffrey Kluger, TIME, 18 Feb. 2025

By now, three or four big guys, all garbed in those white smocks, had popped out onto the Peacock’s front porch. —Charles Hammer, Kansas City Star, 22 Jan. 2025

Word History

Etymology

Noun

borrowed from Middle French & Italian; Middle French garbe "graceful contour, grace," borrowed from Italian garbo "grace, charm, good manners, form, outline of a ship's hull made from wood pieces," of uncertain origin

Note: If the sense "outline of a ship's hull" is prior to the more abstract senses, the modern Italian word probably continues an earlier etymon represented by (alleged) medieval Genoese dialect garibu in the sense "model of a hull," itself ultimately a loan from Arabic qālib "mold, shoemaker's last" (see caliber); details of attestation are thus far incompletely documented, however. An earlier hypothesis connecting garbo (and the related verb garbare "to be becoming to, please") to Germanic *garwjan- "to prepare, make ready" (presumably via Gothic; see gear entry 1, yare) is questionable on semantic and phonetic grounds.

Verb

derivative of garb entry 1

First Known Use

Noun

1600, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Verb

1673, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for garb

• arb
• barb
• barbe
• aldicarb
• rhubarb

Kids Definition

garb

noun

ˈgärb

1

: style of dress

2

: outward form : appearance

garb verb