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gown

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • Canada//ˈɡaʊ̯n//
  • //ˈɡæʊ̯n//
  • //ˈɡaːn//

A loose, flowing upper garment.

noun

  1. 1

    A loose, flowing upper garment.

  2. 2

    A woman's ordinary outer dress, such as a calico or silk gown.

  3. 3

    The official robe of certain professionals, clerics, and scholars, such as university students and officers, barristers, judges, etc.

    VVhat is he an honeſt man? the deuill he is, he is the Parſon of the Towne, You thinke ther’s no knauerie hid vnder a black gowne, […]

  4. 4

    The official robe of certain professionals, clerics, and scholars, such as university students and officers, barristers, judges, etc. The dress of civil officers, as opposed to military officers.

  5. 5

    The university community, especially as contrasted with the local populace.

    In the perennial town versus gown battles, townies win some violent battles, but the collegians are winning the war.

  6. 6

    A loose wrapper worn by gentlemen within doors; a dressing gown.

  7. 7

    Any sort of dress or garb.

  8. 8

    The robe worn by a surgeon.

Etymology

From Middle English gowne, from Anglo-Norman goune, gune (“fur-trimmed coat, pelisse”), from Old French goune, from Late Latin gunna (“leather garment, a fur”). Cognate with Manx gooyn, Irish gúna.

verb

  1. 1

    To dress in a gown, to don or garb with a gown.

Forms

plural
gowns
past tense
gowned
past participle
gowned
present participle
gowning
third person singular
gowns
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).