Definition of "garnish"

And all within with flowres was garnished,

1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, page 253

[…] 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.

1710, Joseph Addison, The Tatler, No. 163, 25 April, 1710, Glasgow: Robert Urie, 1754, p. 165

[…] the whip […] was garnished with a massive horse’s head of plated metal.

1848, Anne Brontë, chapter 14, in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall‎

By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Job 26:13

[…] 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

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

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

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;

1718, Matthew Prior, Alma: or, The Progress of the Mind, Canto 1, in Poems on Several Occasions, London: Jacob Tonson, p. 333

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

So are you, sweet,Even in the lovely garnish of a boy.

c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene vi]

Garnish money, what is customarily spent among the Prisoners at first coming in.

1699, B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, London: W. Hawes et al.

This person then […] acquainted him that it was the custom of the place for every prisoner, upon his first arrival there, to give something to the former prisoners to make them drink. This, he said, was what they called garnish; and concluded with advising his new customer to draw his purse upon the present occasion.

1751 December (indicated as 1752), Henry Fielding, chapter 3, in Amelia. […], volume I, London: […] [William Strahan] for A[ndrew] Millar […], book I, page 13