Other forms: gowns
A gown is a long elegant dress for grand occasions, or graduation robes. A ball gown, evening gown, cap and gown.
Academic gowns descend from the everyday dress of medieval clerks and scholars, which is why the shape is medieval and the colours mean something in each university. A hospital gown is a different thing with the same name. Note dressing gown; and that the Latin gunna meant a fur garment.
1noungownA long elegant dress for grand occasions.
“She wore a long silk gown to the opera.”
2nounrobeA robe worn at a graduation.
“The students threw their caps in the air, still wearing their black gowns.”
gown is a garment.
Old French goune comes from Latin gunna, a fur or leather garment, of uncertain origin.
Middle English
gowne
English, today
gown
Built from
From Middle English gowne. From Middle English gowne, from Anglo-Norman goune, gune (“fur-trimmed coat, pelisse”), from Old French goune, from Latin gunna (“leather garment, a fur”). Cognate with gv gooyn, Irish gúna.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Clothes & Fashion