garnish

A vibrant, detailed photograph of a plate garnished with colorful edible flowers and herbs, in a rustic style.
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A vibrant, detailed photograph of a plate garnished with colorful edible flowers and herbs, in a rustic style.

This image uses the common association of garnish with food decoration. A plate with a beautifully arranged, colorful assortment of food items like herbs, fruit slices, and edible flowers clearly symbolizes the act of garnishing.

  1. verb — garnishes; garnishing; garnished
    1. To decorate with ornaments; to adorn; to embellish.
      • […] the whip […] was garnished with a massive horse’s head of plated metal.
    2. To ornament with something placed around it.
      • a dish garnished with parsley
    3. 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.
    4. To fit with fetters; to fetter.
    5. To warn by garnishment; to give notice to.
    6. 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.
  2. noun — garnishes
    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.
    3. Something added for embellishment.
      • 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.
      • 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.
    4. Clothes; garments, especially when showy or decorative.
    5. Something set round or upon a dish as an embellishment.
    6. Fetters.
    7. 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. Cash.