[f. EQUIP v. + -MENT. Cf. Fr. équipement.]
1. a. The action or process of equipping or fitting out. b. The state or condition of being equipped; the manner in which a person or thing is equipped. Also fig.
a. 1748. Anson’s Voy., I. i. 7. The equipment of the squadron was still prosecuted with as much vigour as ever.
1809. Hist. Europe, in Ann. Reg., 33/1. Lord Liverpool also defended the equipment of the expedition to Portugal.
1875. Whitney, Life Lang., ii. 19. Mental training and shaping, as well as mental equipment.
1886. Pall Mall Gaz., 14 Dec., 9/1. £12,000 for the endowment and equipment of a Chair of Anatomy.
b. 1793. Smeaton, Edystone L., § 123. Its equipment might suit the purposes of a Store-Vessel for our building service.
1841. Elphinstone, Hist. Ind., II. X. iii. 423. An army which seemed irresistible from its numbers and equipment.
1856. Emerson, Eng. Traits, Ability, Wks. (Bohn), II. 38. The admirable equipment of their Arctic ships carries London to the pole.
1863. Burton, Bk.-Hunter, 261. The institution did not spring in full maturity and equipment, like Pallas from the brain of Jove.
2. concr. Anything used in equipping; furniture; outfit; warlike apparatus; necessaries for an expedition or voyage. Used in the pl. to indicate the articles severally, in the sing. collectively.
1717. L. Howel, Desiderius (ed. 3), 14. See my Crook, my Scrip, Box and other Parts of my equipment.
1793. Smeaton, Edystone L., § 275. To forward our equipments for rendering the house habitable.
1801. Strutt, Sports & Past., II. i. 46. The hunting equipments of the female archers.
1813. Wellington, in Gurw., Disp., X. 479. When you shall be in possession of your equipment of ordnance [etc.].
1869. Howson, Metaph. St. Paul, i. 26. The helmet is perhaps the brightest and most conspicuous part of the soldier’s equipment.
1873. Act 36 & 37 Vict., c. 88. Sched. 1, Equipments which are primâ facie evidence of a Vessel being engaged in the Slave Trade.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., III. 264. I include under the general term equipment all that must be actually present with the fighting portion of an army at any one moment.
b. fig. Intellectual ‘outfit.’
1841. Myers, Cath. Th., III. § 43. 118. A valuable portion of a student’s [of the Bible] equipment.
1873. M. Arnold, Lit. & Dogma, 342. A hardly less grotesque object in his intellectual equipment for his task than in his outward attire.
1885. M. Pattison, Mem., 306. Our naive assumption that classical learning was a complete equipment for a great university.
