armamentn.

Etymology: < classical Latin armāmentum (in classical Latin usually in plural, armāmenta) sailing-gear of a ship, tackle, rigging, equipment, gear, in post-classical Latin also armour, weapons (5th cent.) < armāre arm v.¹ + -mentum -ment suffix. The semantic development of the English word was influenced by French armement naval force (c1310 in Old French in an apparently isolated attestation), process of arming or equipping for war (c1310 in Old French in an apparently isolated attestation, subsequently from 1611), military equipment (1525 in Middle French), crew of a warship (1678); the precise sense of the French word in the passage translated in quot. 1698 at sense 2 is difficult to determine, and could be either ‘crew of a warship’ or perhaps ‘action or process of arming a warship’.Compare Old Occitan armament (a1411), Catalan armament (14th cent.), both earliest in sense ‘process of equipping with weapons’, Spanish armamiento (late 14th cent., earliest in sense ‘military equipment’), Italian armamento (late 13th cent.).