Gambison

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A thick, quilted jacket of layered cloth worn under chain mail or plate armor in medieval warfare to cushion blows
2. A padded defensive coat stitched in layers and worn beneath armour to absorb the force of a strike
3. A heavily padded tunic used in the Middle Ages as protective underwear beneath a suit of mail or other armor

Etymology: The word names a padded, quilted jacket worn under armour in the Middle Ages, and its story starts with the human belly. Its ancestor is Frankish "wamba", meaning "stomach", which goes back to a Proto-Germanic root for "belly" and "womb". Medieval Latin turned this into "wambāsium", a term for a doublet or waistcoat, and Old French reshaped it into "gambais" and "wambais", meaning a quilted jerkin. The jacket was the body-hugging layer that soldiers wore beneath mail or plate, so the word moved from the most ordinary part of the body to a piece of armour. English borrowed it in the Middle Ages as the Middle English "gambison", and the spelling "gambeson" is the form most often used today.

Synonyms: gambeson, aketon