Enduement

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The action of donning or clothing oneself in garments
2. The process of dressing by putting on clothes or attire
3. The wearing or assumption of clothing upon one's body

Etymology: "Enduement" is a plain English formation: the verb "endue" with the suffix "-ment" attached. "Endue" itself came into English from Old French "enduire," which goes back to Latin "inducere," meaning to lead or bring into, and its earliest English sense was to lead or bring someone into a state or quality. The idea of putting something on, as in clothing oneself, grew out of that sense of bringing a person into a condition, so the verb gradually came to mean to furnish or invest someone with a quality, and then to dress them in garments. The suffix "-ment" has an older pedigree than the word it sits on. It descends from Latin "-mentum," which formed nouns expressing the result or means of an action, and it passed into English largely through Old French, where it was a productive way of turning verbs into nouns. English speakers therefore had a ready-made pattern for making a noun from "endue," and "enduement" took its place among similar formations such as "ornament" and "investment."

Synonyms: endowment, bestowal, investiture, gift

Antonyms: deprivation, dispossession