garniture

From Middle English garnetture, from Anglo-Norman garniture, gerneiture, from Old French garneture (“accessory for a saddle”), from Old French garnir.

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈɡɑrnɪtʃər/

garniture (plural garnitures)

1. Something that garnishes; a decoration, adornment or embellishment
   • 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVII, in Romance and Reality. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 251:

     The Countess came forward to meet them, looking more beautiful than ever. But it was not now that Emily envied her beauty;—no philosopher like a girl in love, to feel, for the time being, utter indifference to all possible pomp and garniture.

   • 1855, Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, section XVI:

     […] I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face / Beneath its garniture of curly gold, / Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold / An arm in mine to fix me to the place / That way he used.

   • 1888, Henry James, The Reverberator, Macmillan and Co.:

     They believed that the ladies and the gentlemen alike had covered them with endearments, were candidly, gushingly glad to make their acquaintance. They had not in the least seen what was manner, the minimum of decent profession, and what the subtle resignation of old races who have known a long historical discipline and have conventional forms for their feelings—forms resembling singularly little the feelings themselves. Francie took people at their word […] It would not have occurred to the girl that such things need have been said as a mere garniture. Her lover, whose life had been surrounded with garniture and who therefore might have been expected not to notice it, had a fresh sense of it now […]

2. A matching array of plate armour and its accessories

Inherited from Middle French garniture, from Old French garneture, garnesture, from Old French garnir. Compare Anglo-Norman warnesture, warniture, whence Middle English warnestore, warnestoure.

• IPA^(key): /ɡaʁ.ni.tyʁ/

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garniture f (plural garnitures)

1. garniture
2. (music, lutherie, bowmaking) lapping, winding

• “garniture”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.