verb
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to dress or attire (a person)
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to provide with clothing or covering
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to conceal or disguise
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to endow or invest
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of clothe
before 950; Middle English clothen, Old English clāthian, derivative of clāth cloth
Explanation
To clothe someone is to give them something to wear, or to dress them in clothing. If you clothe your dog in cute outfits, you may traumatize him for life. You can clothe yourself, or someone else — for example, you might clothe yourself in black for a relative's funeral or clothe yourself in sequins and feathers for the school dance. You can also figuratively clothe someone or something, lending them a sense of power or respectability. Clothe shares a root with clothing and cloth, the Old English claþ, "cloth or sail," and also "woven material to wrap around oneself."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Happ, who spends several weeks a year helping feed and clothe the poor in Uganda, was an ideal representative for ADF to take on the banking industry.
From The Wall Street Journal • Sep. 18, 2025
“To work with an 86-piece orchestra and to cast, clothe, rehearse, corral and pay 128 performers is expensive, and to protect their voices, we can only play twice a week.”
From Los Angeles Times • May 15, 2024
But he said it was entirely consistent with Francis’ call for artists to engage with the poor and the Gospel mandate to clothe the naked, feed the hungry and visit the incarcerated.
From Seattle Times • Mar. 11, 2024
During that year, families struggled to afford food, clothe their children and heat their homes.
From BBC • Mar. 2, 2024
At age fourteen, I didn’t own a lot of clothes because there were six children to clothe in our household.
From "While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement" by Carolyn Maull McKinstry
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
