garnish

Etymology

From Middle English garnysshen, from Old French garniss-, stem of certain forms of the verb garnir, guarnir, warnir (“to provide, furnish, avert, defend, warn, fortify, garnish”), from a conflation of Old Frankish *warnijan (“to refuse, deny”) and *warnōn (“warn, protect, prepare, beware, guard oneself”), from Proto-Germanic *warnijaną (“to worry, care, heed”) and Proto-Germanic *warnōną (“to warn”); both from Proto-Indo-European *wer- (“to defend, protect, cover”). Cognate with Old English wiernan (“to withhold, be sparing of, deny, refuse, reject, decline, forbid, prevent from, avert”) and warnian (“to warn, caution, take warning, take heed, guard oneself against, deny”). More at warn.

verb

1. To decorate with ornaments; to adorn; to embellish.
   1710, Joseph Addison, The Tatler, No. 163, 25 April, 1710, Glasgow: Robert Urie, 1754, p. 165, […] as that admirable writer has the best and worst verses of any among our English poets, Ned Softly has got all the bad ones without book, which he repeats upon occasion, to shew his reading, and garnish his conversation.
   […] the whip […] was garnished with a massive horse’s head of plated metal. 1848, Anne Brontë, chapter 14, in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
2. (cooking) To ornament with something placed around it.
   a dish garnished with parsley
3. (archaic) To furnish; to supply.
   […] the good-humoured, affectionate-hearted Godfrey Cass was fast becoming a bitter man, visited by cruel wishes, that seemed to enter, and depart, and enter again, like demons who had found in him a ready-garnished home. 1861, George Eliot, Silas Marner, Part One, Chapter 3
4. (slang, archaic) To fit with fetters; to fetter.
5. (law) To warn by garnishment; to give notice to.
6. (law) To have (money) set aside by court order (particularly for the payment of alleged debts); to garnishee.
   When the editorial board of Fire met again, we did not plan a new issue, but emptied our pockets to help poor Thurman whose wages were being garnished weekly because he had signed for the printer’s bills. 1966, Langston Hughes, “The Twenties: Harlem and Its Negritude”, in Christopher C. De Santis, editor, The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, volume 9, page 473

noun

1. A set of dishes, often pewter, containing a dozen pieces of several types.
2. Pewter vessels in general.
   The accounts of collegiate and monastic institutions give abundant entries of the price of pewter vessels, called also garnish. 1882, James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, volume 4, page 478
3. Something added for embellishment.
   1718, Matthew Prior, Alma: or, The Progress of the Mind, Canto 1, in Poems on Several Occasions, London: Jacob Tonson, p. 333, First Poets, all the World agrees, Write half to profit, half to please Matter and figure They produce; For Garnish This, and That for Use;
   This hard-headed old Overreach approved of the sentimental song, as the suitable garnish for girls, and also as fundamentally fine, sentiment being the right thing for a song. 1872, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book I, Chapter 12
   There had been a semblance of chivalry in the attitude from which, at the beginning of their marriage, he had briefly regarded her; but forty-seven years had efficiently disposed of that garnish of politeness. 1972, William Trevor, “The Grass Widows”, in The Collected Stories, New York: Viking, published 1992, page 228
4. Clothes; garments, especially when showy or decorative.
5. (cooking) Something set round or upon a dish as an embellishment.
6. (slang, obsolete) Fetters.
7. (slang, historical) A fee; specifically, in English jails, formerly an unauthorized fee demanded from a newcomer by the older prisoners.
   1699, B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, London: W. Hawes et al., Garnish money, what is customarily spent among the Prisoners at first coming in.
8. (US, slang) Cash.