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Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

impedimenta en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • /ɪmˌpɛdɪˈmɛntə/

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin impedimenta, circa 1600. Compare impediment.

Meanings

  1. Equipment intended for an activity that serves as more of a hindrance than a help, especially military baggage.
    • There was no sign of piano, organ, hymn-books, church programs—the familiar ecclesiastical impedimenta we saw every Sunday. 1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC:
    • Games impedimenta — hockey-sticks, boxing-gloves, a burst football, a pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out — lay all over the floor, and on the table there was a litter of dirty dishes and dog-eared exercise-books. 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, page 20:
    • Dashing back to my compartment, I grabbed my impedimenta - what my companion thought of the maniac who alighted at a station only half-way to the first booked stop I don't know ! - got out, hurried under the subway, and was into my 10.45 comfortably before its departure. 1939 June, “Pertinent Paragraphs: A Surprise at Didcot”, in Railway Magazine, page 452:
    • On the plains they will have horses dragging travoises, dogs with travoises, women and children loaded with impedimenta. 1892, Julian Ralph, On Canada's Frontier:
  2. (form-of, plural) plural of impedimentum
    form of impedimentum

Synonyms

impediments