Word.ws English Dictionary

apparell

apparell is the obsolete form of apparel.

Meaning of apparel

Noun

apparel (countable and uncountable, plural apparels)

  1. (uncountable) Clothing.
    • fresh in his new apparel, proud and young1636 (date written), John Denham, “The Destruction of Troy, an Essay upon the Second Book of Virgils Æneis”, in Poems and Translations, with The Sophy, London: […] [John Macock] for H[enry]...
  2. (figuratively) Aspect, guise, form.
    • At public devotions, her winning modesty, her resigned carriage, made virtue and religion appear with new ornaments, and in the natural apparel of simplicity and beauty.1709 August 23 (Gregorian calendar), Isaac Bickerstaff [et al., pseudonyms; Richard Steele et al.], “Friday, August 13, 1709”, in The Tatler, number 54; republished in [Richard Steele], editor, The...
  3. (countable) A small ornamental piece of embroidery worn on albs and some other ecclesiastical vestments.
  4. Furniture of a ship, such as masts, sails, rigging, anchors, guns, etc.
    • And if there is need of any thing, such as ship's apparel or other necessaries, and the merchants desire to purchase them, they may do so, and when the voyage is concluded, the merchants may claim for themselves the things which they have bought for the ship or vessel1871, Travis Twiss, Black Book of the Admiralty

See all 7 meanings of apparel

Forms of apparell

pluralapparells

Questions about apparell

What is apparell the obsolete form of?
Apparell is the obsolete form of apparel.

Words near apparell in the dictionary

  1. apparatūs
  2. apparel
  3. appareled
  4. appareling
  5. apparelings
  6. apparell
  7. apparelled
  8. apparelling
  9. apparellings
  10. apparells
  11. apparelment

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: apparell (page history and authors); apparel (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “apparell.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/apparell. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.