Clothing
noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Any of a wide variety of articles, usually made of fabrics, animal hair, animal skin, or some combination thereof, used to cover the human body for warmth, to preserve modesty, or for fashion. countable, uncountable
"Marco runs a clothing brand."
- 2 a covering designed to be worn on a person's body wordnet
- 3 An act or instance of putting clothes on. countable, uncountable
"The clothing and unclothing of the idols was of special significance."
- 4 The art or process of making cloth. countable, obsolete, uncountable
"[M]any of the poor diſtreſſed People, being bereft of their Habitation, came into England, vvhere the King, in Compaſſion of their Condition, and alſo, conſidering that they might be beneficial to his Subjects, by instructing them in the Art of Cloathing, firſt placed them about Carliſle in the North, and after removed them into South-VVales, vvhere their Poſterity hath ever ſince remained."
- 5 A covering of non-conducting material on the outside of a boiler, or steam chamber, to prevent radiation of heat. countable, uncountable
- 1 present participle and gerund of clothe form-of, gerund, participle, present
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"We provided the flood victims with food and clothing."
Etymology
From Middle English clothing, clathing; equivalent to clothe + -ing. Cognate with Scots cleeding, cleiding, cleading (“clothing”), Dutch kleding (“clothing”), German Kleidung (“clothing”), Danish klædning (“clothing, dress, attire”), Swedish klädning (“dress”). Doublet of the dialectal English term cleading, from Middle English clething; compare also cladding.
Related phrases
More for "clothing"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.