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garb

noun · verb

Simple meaning

A type of dress or clothing.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

gahrb
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈɡɑɹb

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. A type of dress or clothing.

  2. Fashion, style of dressing oneself up.

  3. figurative

    A guise, external appearance.

  4. A measure of arrows in the Middle Ages.

verb

  1. transitive

    To dress in garb.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
C2 · Proficient (estimated)
Frequency
Uncommon
Formality
Technical

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A type of dress or clothing.

Used this way, garb is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

religious garbclerical garbnew garbprison garbtraditional garbmilitary garbsimple garbnative garb

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Similar Words, What’s the Difference?

Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.

  • raiment

    Clothing, garments, dress, material.

  • attire

    One's dress; what one wears; one's clothes.

  • garment

    An article of clothing.

  • dress

    An item of clothing (usually worn by a woman or young girl) which both covers the upper part of the body and includes a….

Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • civilian garbnounCompound term

    Ordinary clothing as distinguished from uniforms, work clothes, clerical garb, etc.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.