accouterment

English

Alternative forms

• accoutrement (Commonwealth)

Etymology

From Middle French accoustrement, from accoustrer, from Old French acostrer (“arrange, sew up”), first attested in the 1540s.

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /əˈku.tɚ.mənt/, /əˈku.t͡ʃɹə.mənt/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Noun

accouterment (plural accouterments)

1. (military, chiefly in the plural) A soldier's equipment, other than weapons and uniform.
   • 1705, John Philips, Blenheim, a Poem:

     Thus One / Jovial his Mate bespoke; O Friend, observe, / How gay with all th'Accoutrements of War / The Britons come, with Gold well fraught they come

   • 1837, Thomas Carlyle, “Give us Arms”, in The French Revolution: A History […], volume I (The Bastille), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, book V (The Third Estate), page 182:

     Three thousand six hundred of the best fighting men, with complete accoutrement; with cannoneers even, and cannon!

   • 1933, Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas‎^[1]:

     He [Manolo] was supposed to have left Spain while he was doing his military service, that is to say he was in the cavalry and he went across the border, and sold his horse and his accoutrement, and so had enough money to come to Paris and be a sculptor.

2. (chiefly in the plural) An article of clothing or equipment, in particular when used as an accessory.

   Synonyms: equipment, gear, trappings, accessory

   • c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii], page 219, column 2:

     To me ſhe's married, not vnto my cloathes: / Could I repaire what ſhe will weare in me, / As I can change theſe poore accoutrements, / 'Twere well for Kate, and better for my ſelfe.

   • 1826, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 3, in The Last of the Mohicans:

     While one of these loiterers showed the red skin and wild accouterments of a native of the woods, the other exhibited, […]

   • 1913 January–May, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Gods of Mars”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as “Thuvia”, in The Gods of Mars, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., 1918 September, →OCLC, page 56:

     And then from beyond the blank wall beside which I lay I heard the shuffling of feet, the snarling of grim beasts, the clank of metal accouterments, and the heavy breathing of a man.

   • 1988 September 26, William Stockton, “Giving a New Twist to the Rat Race”, in The New York Times‎^[2], →ISSN:

     An essential accoutrement to participation in the daily grind of New York is a briefcase, and any self-respecting office slave eventually amasses a collection, from canvas bags to stylish leather-covered boxes.

   • 1989, Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces, Faber & Faber, published 2009:

     They used rock'n'roll as a weapon against itself. With all instruments but guitar, bass, drums, and voice written off as effete, as elitist accoutrements of a professionalist cult of technique, it was music best suited to anger and frustration, […]

   • 2005, Tony Judt, “The Age of Affluence”, in Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945, London: Vintage Books, published 2010, →ISBN:

     Partly for this reason, the washing machine–like dishwashers after the mid-1970s–remained associated in commercial imagery with the domestic accoutrements of the affluent middle class.

   • 2018, Ling Ma, chapter 8, in Severance, →ISBN:

     It took me a second to identify what they were selling: accoutrements of mourning and/or ancestral worship. Spirit money, yellow bills imprinted with gold foil, was tied with red string and shrink-wrapped in thick stacks.

   • 2021 February 11, David J. Lewkowicz, “Masks Can Be Detrimental to Babies' Speech and Language Development”, in Scientific American‎^[3]:

     Now that the face mask has become the essential accoutrement of our lives, the COVID pandemic has laid bare our fundamental need to see whole faces.

3. (by extension) An identifying yet superficial characteristic.
   • 1968, Joan Didion, “Life Styles in the Golden Land”, in Slouching Towards Bethlehem:

     By the summer of 1964 they had achieved the bigger house on the better street and the familiar accouterments of a family on its way up: the $30,000 a year, the three children for the Christmas card, the picture window, the family room, […]

   • 2012 June 26, Genevieve Koski, “Music: Reviews: Justin Bieber: Believe”, in The A.V. Club‎^[4], archived from the original on 6 August 2020:

     But musical ancestry aside, the influence to which [Justin] Bieber is most beholden is the current trends in pop music, which means Believe is loaded up with EDM accouterments, […]

4. (archaic) The act of accoutering; furnishing.

Related terms

• accouter

Translations

trappings

• French: accoutrement (fr) m
• German: Ausstaffierung f
• Irish: ciútraimintí pl (accoutrements)
• Maori: utauta

Further reading

• “accoutrement”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “accouterment”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

Anagrams

• accoutrement