to supply with whatever gear or apparatus is needed for use or for any undertaking; fit out, as a ship or army.
They spent several thousand dollars to equip their boat.
to provide with intellectual or emotional resources; prepare.
Education and travel have equipped her to deal with all sorts of people.
to dress; array.
He equipped himself in all his finery.
to furnish with (necessary supplies, etc)
(usually passive) to provide with abilities, understanding, etc
her son was never equipped to be a scholar
to dress out; attire
See furnish.
First recorded in 1515–25; from Middle French equiper, Old French esquiper “to fit out, equip,” probably from Old Norse skipa “to put in order, arrange, man (a ship)”
To equip means to provide something needed for a particular purpose. If you’re planning a trip to the Arctic, you should equip yourself with warm clothes, tents, and two-way radios. You might want to equip someone with an ice axe for ice climbing and a diving watch for underwater excursions. The ice axe or the diving watch is their equipment. Equip can also be used in a more figurative sense. If you are supposed to write computer programs but have never worked with a computer, you might say that you are not equipped for that. On a really bad day, it might feel like people are not equipped to deal with each other politely.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In 1922, Georgia’s governor credited Felton with having “all the qualities of heart and head that equip one for broad and constructive statesmanship.”
From Slate ● Jul. 24, 2026
Xbox leadership has insisted the "painful" cuts across its sprawling network of studios are necessary to equip it for future success, as it pivots focus to its biggest blockbuster titles.
From BBC ● Jul. 15, 2026
Siemens Energy will equip the platform with transmission technology, most from its German factories.
From Barron's ● Jun. 17, 2026
Required investments for the newcomers—in new roads, homes, hospitals and machinery—can hurt overall economic productivity, according to Manning, because that capital could have been used to better equip the existing population.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
I knew what tools to equip them with because I’d been exactly where they were.
From "Proud" by Ibtihaj Muhammad
“But we can’t facilitate. We can educate. We can navigate. We can equip. We’ve got an entire educational library. July 1 didn’t just get here and go, ‘Okay, you figure this out.’
From Washington Post ● Jul. 22, 2021
UPS equips Reyez with hats, sleeves and towels made with cooling technologies developed by Mission, a brand that also supplies the fabrics to professional sports teams and athletes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 3, 2026
Half of the Helios campus is leased to CoreWeave, which equips it, positioning Galaxy to capitalize on AI demand.
From Barron's ● Jun. 8, 2026
Washington leads PrEPHer, a program that equips Black, brown, and queer women with sexual health education and access to free HIV/STI self-testing kits.
From Salon ● Mar. 19, 2026
Bateman: What comedy equips you with is a comfort in playing flawed people.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 10, 2026
She equips the navies of the world with projectiles and range-finders.
From A Short History of Pittsburgh by Church, Samuel Harden
Shimmering silver foil curtains hung from the front windows and the adjacent workout room, equipped with a mirrored wall and barres, was bathed in soft bubble-gum pink light.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
It added that helicopters, sourced and funded by Forestry and Land Scotland, would likely continue water bombing on Tuesday, assisted by drones equipped with thermal cameras to detect hotspots.
From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026
Most new cars are equipped with software that connects to the internet and scoops up data.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026
Despite a search of the park with helicopters equipped with heat-detection cameras, police were not able to locate the suspect in the immediate aftermath.
From Barron's ● Jul. 26, 2026
Each all-black regiment was equipped by and served with a French division.
From "The War to End All Wars: World War I" by Russell Freedman
Gustavsson says he’s seeking to balance the two, while equipping engineers with the information they need to make decisions on which model to use for certain tasks.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
In a written statement, Zito said he plans to create a “Christ-centered institution dedicated to educating, equipping, and sending leaders throughout America and the nations of the world.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
Cloud provider CoreWeave leased the first 800 megawatts and is equipping the data center itself.
From Barron's ● Jun. 8, 2026
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, meanwhile, became the first in California to employ the device, equipping two vehicles by mid-2025 and adding another eight vehicles six months later.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 7, 2026
There is no hope of better equipping me unless we use Julie’s clothing coupons.
From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein
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.
