accouter

• accoutre (Commonwealth)

From Middle French accoutrer, from Old French acoustrer, from Vulgar Latin acconsūtūrāre (“to equip with clothes”), from Latin ad (“to”) + consūtūra (“sewing, clothes”), from Latin cōnsuō (“to sew together”), from Latin con- (“together”) + suō (“to sew”), first attested in the 1590s.

• (US) IPA^(key): /əˈku tɚ/

  • Audio (Southern England):

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accouter (third-person singular simple present accouters, present participle accoutering, simple past and past participle accoutered)

1. (transitive) To furnish with dress or equipments, especially those for military service

   Synonyms: equip, attire, array; see also Thesaurus:clothe

   • c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , page 177, column 1:

     […] Ile hold thee any wager / When we are both accoutered like yong men, / Ile proue the prettier fellow of the two, […]

   • 1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , page 110, column 2:

     Vpon the word, / Accoutred as I was, I plunged in,

   • 1693, John Dryden, “The Third Satire of Perseus”, in Walter Scott, editor, The works of John Dryden, volume 13, published 1808, page 235:

     For this, in rags accoutered, are they seen, / And made the may-game of the public spleen?

   • 1814, William Wordsworth, “The Solitary”, in The Excursion:

     Both while he trod the earth in humblest guise / Accoutred with his burthen and his staff;

   • 2022, Jennifer Egan, “What the Forest Remembers”, in The Candy House:

     There is a leader—there is usually a leader when men leave their established perimeters—and today it is Quinn Davies, a tanned, open-faced man accoutered with artifacts of a Native American ancestry he wishes he possessed.

• accouterment

• “accoutre”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

• accoutre, cocurate

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

accouter

1. (Jersey, reflexive, s'accouter) to lean upon one's elbows