[ad. med.L. vestitura, f. L. vestīre to VEST. Cf. INVESTITURE.]
1. Investiture of a person in an office or with power, etc.; = INVESTITURE 2 and 3. rare.
1387. Trevisa, Higden (Rolls), VII. 419. He resigned to God and to seint Peter þe vestiture of prelates þat was i-doo by seculer hondes.
1861. J. A. Alexander, Gosp. Jesus Christ, xxxix. 521. A proof of man’s original formation in God’s image, and his original vestiture with delegated power as God’s vicegerent.
2. concr. That which clothes or covers: † a. VESTURE sb. 2. Obs. rare.
In quots. translating L. vestitura in documents of the second half of the 13th c.
c. 1460. Oseney Reg. (1913), 152. Þe saide Abbot and oþer lordes aforenamed … haue i-suffrid þat þe saide John the vestiture (or grasse) or þe same telthe þe which abode … in þis ȝere alone may gadur & haue. Ibid., 156. Þe vestiture of þe saide In-hoke.
b. Clothes, clothing, vesture. Also transf. and fig.
The first quotation is the source of the inexact definition given by Worcester (1846), and some later Dictionaries.
1842. R. Park, Pantology (1847), 472. Under the head of Vestiture, we include all those arts which relate immediately to the manufacture of cloth, and preparation of clothing.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., xl. (1856), 366. I claim to be the first who has reduced all vestiture to a primitive form. Ibid. (1856), Arct. Expl., II. i. 23. A pair of bear-skin breeches,… the characteristic and national vestiture of this strange people.
1877. Tinsley’s Mag., XX. 512/1. It is night in the streets of a fair Italian city, and the lonely queen of light is … arraying in snowy vestiture the tall shafts and broad walls of marble that rise here and there.
1879. J. Hawthorne, Sebast. Strome, II. xi. 175. Mary … felt herself pointedly unequal to introducing her ungainly news under a graceful vestiture of words.
Hence † Vestitured a. Obs.–0
1623. Cockeram, I. Vestitured [printed -uted], apparelled.
