garniture

From Middle English garnetture, from Anglo-Norman garniture, gerneiture, from Old French garneture (“accessory for a saddle”), from Old French garnir.

garniture (plural garnitures)

1. Something that garnishes; a decoration, adornment or embellishment
   • 1855, Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”, XVI:

     […] I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face / Beneath its garniture of curly gold, / Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold / An arm in mine to fix me to the place / That way he used.

   • 1888, Henry James, The Reverberator.

     They believed that the ladies and the gentlemen alike had covered them with endearments, were candidly, gushingly glad to make their acquaintance. They had not in the least seen what was manner, the minimum of decent profession, and what the subtle resignation of old races who have known a long historical discipline and have conventional forms for their feelings—forms resembling singularly little the feelings themselves. Francie took people at their word […] It would not have occurred to the girl that such things need have been said as a mere garniture. Her lover, whose life had been surrounded with garniture and who therefore might have been expected not to notice it, had a fresh sense of it now […]

From Middle French garniture, from Old French garneture, garnesture, from Old French garnir. Compare Anglo-Norman warnesture, warniture, whence Middle English warnestore, warnestoure.

• IPA^(key): /ɡaʁ.ni.tyʁ/

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garniture f (plural garnitures)

1. garniture
2. (music, lutherie, bowmaking) lapping, winding

• “garniture” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).