Rayment

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Archaic term for clothing, the garments a person wears to cover the body
2. Old-fashioned word meaning apparel, especially the attire or dress worn by someone
3. Garments collectively, an antiquated way of referring to the clothes one puts on

Etymology: To dress someone was once to "array" them, meaning to put them in order, and "rayment" is a clipped form of "arrayment," the noun for what one was dressed in. The "ar-" was dropped over the centuries, so the word now looks unrelated to its parent, though "raiment" and "rayment" are the same word spelled differently. "Array" came into Middle English from Old French "arayer," meaning to arrange or prepare, and its ultimate origin is a Germanic word for making ready. The sense of clothing grew out of that general idea of getting something into proper order, so the garment and the arrangement share a single history.

Synonyms: raiment, clothing, garments, apparel, attire