wardrobe
Americannoun
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wardrobes
plural
-
a stock of clothes or costumes, as of a person or of a theatrical company.
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a piece of furniture for holding clothes, now usually a tall, upright case fitted with hooks, shelves, etc.
-
a room or place in which to keep clothes or costumes.
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the department of a royal or other great household charged with the care of wearing apparel.
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a department in a motion-picture or television studio in charge of supplying and maintaining costumes.
Report to wardrobe right after lunch.
verb (used with object)
noun
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a tall closet or cupboard, with a rail or hooks on which to hang clothes
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the total collection of articles of clothing belonging to one person
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the collection of costumes belonging to a theatre or theatrical company
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of wardrobe
1250–1300; Middle English warderobe < Anglo-French. See ward (v.), robe
Explanation
All of the clothes in your closet make up your wardrobe. If you're tired of your wardrobe, it just might be time to go shopping. From the words warder, meaning “to protect”, and robe, meaning a “piece of clothing,” wardrobe originally meant an entire room where a person's clothing was stored. Nowadays, most people don’t have an entire room for their clothes, so the word wardrobe has downsized to just a large cabinet, or the clothing itself. A wardrobe can also be the costumes (or the costume department) of a theater company or movie.
Vocabulary lists containing wardrobe
The Ottoman Empire: Furniture Words
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100 SAT words Beginning with W,X,Y, and Z
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Academy Awards, List 5
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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.
See Examples For:
“You can tell they’re figuring out their wardrobe and feel awkward,” she says.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2026
Janet Arnold brings Elizabeth’s court to life with her revelatory transcription of the royal wardrobe accounts, including descriptions of 2,000 of the queen’s phantasmagorical dresses.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026
If it does, it will not be the first time an item from the princess's wardrobe has sold for a significant sum.
From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2026
The wardrobe of Neil Patrick Harris, who played a military intelligence officer, appeared to be lifted entirely from the less-celebrated work of designer Hugo Boss.
From Salon ● Sep. 9, 2026
He moved the heavy, wobbly old wardrobe away from the wall with surprising ease and pulled my bed into the center of the room.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
The police move from room to room, by torchlight - there's no power - opening wardrobes and lifting mattresses.
From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026
Consumers are experimenting more with fragrance and want to create their own scent wardrobes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
Narratively, their characters — a heroine and her nemesis — shouldn’t dress as though they could swap wardrobes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 29, 2026
Now they are expected to change the way people dress as they lose weight, with GLP-1 users potentially spending billions more each year to refresh their wardrobes, Bernstein analysts said.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 20, 2026
It was harder this time—their furnishings and wardrobes hadn’t expanded, but their hardware had.
From "Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho" by Jon Katz
Before taking part in the ceremony, he’s wardrobed in “traditional” attire, which the British have crafted based on Indian drawings.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 28, 2018
A woman dressed as a sailboat stood proudly on one side; several others wardrobed like giant Gerbera daisies — their lean green-suited bodies topped with giant multi-petal hats.
From Washington Post
“I didn’t know how it worked at all,” Mr. Sessa said of celebrity dressing — in strategic terms, a wardrobing “Game of Thrones.”
From New York Times ● Jan. 23, 2024
Not that he thinks the solution lies in wardrobing.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 16, 2023
Aside from wardrobing Tom Cruise in “Vanilla Sky” as well as providing clothes for several “Mission: Impossible” and James Bond movies, Varvatos has largely stayed out of Hollywood until now.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 5, 2019
Others accept behavior such as "wardrobing" — in which customers buy an item, use it and then return it — as a hazard of doing business.
From Chicago Tribune ● Feb. 2, 2014
Her name recognition soared after she spent a season wardrobing contestants for the hit TV reality show Star Factory.
From Time Magazine Archive
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.
