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PlainSpell

vestment

/ˈvɛstmənt/noun

vestment is a noun meaning “A robe, gown, or other article of clothing worn as an indication of office” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-E-S-T-M-E-N-T and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 14 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of vestment is vestments.

What does vestment mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A robe, gown, or other article of clothing worn as an indication of office.

    The priest wore a white vestment during the ceremony.

  2. 2

    Any of the special articles of clothing worn by members of the clergy etc., especially a garment worn at the celebration of the Eucharist.

    liturgical vestment

  3. 3

    Clothing.

  4. 4

    archaicAn article of clothing, especially an outer garment.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce vestment?

  • /ˈvɛstmənt/

Vestment has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-vestment.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of vestment

  • vestments plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is vestment?

Vestment appears about once in every 14 million words in written English, the 113,022nd most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Vestment in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense robe worn by members of the clergy:

LanguageWords
GermanOrnat

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does vestment come from?

From Middle English vestement, vestment, from Old French vestement, from Latin vestīmentum. By surface analysis, vest + -ment. Compare French vêtement.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).