Bible dictionaries
Attire
What Bible dictionaries say about “Attire”, one article after the other.
Easton’s Bible Dictionary & Webster’s 1828 Dictionary
Attire - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)
ATTI'RE, v.t.
To dress; to array; to adorn with elegant or splendid garments.
With the linen miter shall Aaron be attired. Lev 16.
ATTI'RE, n.
1. Dress; clothes; habit; but appropriately, ornamental dress.
Can a bride forget her attire. Jer 2.
2. The horns of a deer.
3. In botany, the generative parts of plants. florid attire, called thrums or suits, as in the flowers of marygold or tansy, consists of two or three parts, of which the outer part is the floret. semiform attire consists of the chives and apexes. This language is now obsolete.
Matthew George Easton, Easton’s Bible Dictionary; Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language (1828)
The article in Easton + Webster 1828International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE 1915)
a-tir': "Can a virgin forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?" asks the prophet Jeremiah in hot remonstrance against Israel's unfaithfulness. "Yet," saith Yahweh, "my people have forgotten me" (2:32). "And I saw that she was defiled," cries Ezekiel against Jerusalem; "she saw men ... girded with girdles upon their loins, with flowing turbans [AV exceeding in dyed attire] upon their heads, ..... after the likeness of the Babylonians in Chaldea, .... and .... she doted upon them .... "(Eze 23:13-16). "And, behold, there met him," says the author of Pr (Pr 7:10) in his description of the "strange woman," that "lieth in wait at every street corner," "a woman with the attire of a harlot, and wily of heart," whose "house is the way to Sheol" (Pr 7:27). These passages show how diversely and elastically the term "attire" was used among the Hebrews. The numerous synonyms for "dress," "attire," "apparel," "clothes," "raiment," "garment," etc., found in English Versions of the Bible, reflect a similar wealth of nomenclature in the original Hebrew and Greek; but the lack of exactness and consistency in the renderings of translators makes the identification of the various articles of dress referred to very difficult, sometimes impossible. See DRESS.
George B. Eager
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia — James Orr, general editor and contributors; CrossWire SWORD module ISBE 2.2
The article in ISBE 1915