Vest

How to spell vest

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce vest

What does vest mean?

1. nounA close-fitting sleeveless garment worn on the upper body, either as an undergarment or over a shirt.
2. verbTo grant or confer power, authority, rights, or property to a person or body.

Vest in a sentence

• noun

  He wore a thermal vest under his shirt during the cold snap.

• verb

  The constitution can vest executive power in a single elected leader.

• noun

  The cyclist zipped a reflective vest over her jacket.

• verb

  The new contract will vest full ownership of the patent in the company.

Where does vest come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin vestis, meaning simply 'clothing' or 'a garment', and the related verb vestire, 'to clothe' or 'to dress'. English took it up in the late 1500s, partly through the Italian veste and French veste, both meaning 'robe' or 'garment', when the noun came to name a particular item of dress. The figurative verb sense grew naturally from the literal one: just as you can clothe a person in robes, you can 'clothe' them in authority, rights, or property, which is why we still speak of powers being vested in an office. The same Latin root survives in 'vestment', the ceremonial robe worn by clergy, and in 'invest', which originally meant to dress someone in the robes of office before it came to mean putting money to work. Keeping the Latin vestis in mind helps fix the plain spelling, since the word is short and entirely regular.

How the word is built

• vest (from Latin vestis: clothing, garment)