FromMiddle Frenchgarbe("graceful outline, silhouette"; > ModernFrenchgalbe), fromItaliangarbo(“grace, elegance”), fromGermanic (compareOld High Germangarwi,garawi(“dress, equipment, preparation”),Middle High Germangerwe(“outfitting, jewelry, clothing, robe, regalia”), modernGermanGärbe,Gerbe andEnglishgear), ultimately fromFrankish*garwijan(“to prepare”), fromProto-Germanic*garwijaną(“to prepare”).
garb (countable anduncountable,pluralgarbs)
- Fashion,style ofdressing oneself up.[from late 16thc.]
- A type of dress or clothing.[from early 17thc.]
1910,Emerson Hough, chapter I, inThe Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.:The Bobbs-Merrill Company,→OCLC:This new-comer was a man who in any company would have seemed striking.[…]Indeed, all his features were in large mold, like the man himself, as though he had come from a day when skin garments made the propergarb of men.
- (figurative) Aguise,externalappearance.
1599 (date written),William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, inMr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, andEd[ward] Blount, published1623,→OCLC,[Act V, scene i]:You thought, because he could not speak English in the nativegarb, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel.
garb (third-person singular simple presentgarbs,present participlegarbing,simple past and past participlegarbed)
- (transitive) To dress in garb.
FromFrenchgerbe; akin toGermanGarbe.Doublet ofgerbe.
garb (pluralgarbs)
- (heraldry) Awheatsheaf.
- A measure of arrows in theMiddle Ages.
1957, H. R. Schubert,History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, page118:Yorkshire supplied 500 bows, and 580garbs of arrows, 360 of which had iron heads pointed with steel.
Translations to be checked
Inherited fromOld Polishgarb, fromProto-Slavic*gъrbъ.
garb m animal orm inan (diminutivegarbekorgarbik)
- hump(rounded fleshy mass)
- hump(deformity of the human back)
- dead weight(that which is useless or excess)
- Synonyms:balast,obciążenie
See the etymology of the correspondinglemma form.
garb
- second-personsingularimperative ofgarbić
- garb inWielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
- garb in Polish dictionaries at PWN
