The Collaborative International Dictionary
Gambeson \Gam"be*son\, n. Same as Gambison.
Wiktionary
alt. A defensive garment formerly in use for the body, made of cloth stuffed and quilted. n. A defensive garment formerly in use for the body, made of cloth stuffed and quilted.
Wikipedia
A gambeson (or aketon or padded jack or arming doublet) is a padded defensive jacket, worn as armour separately, or combined with mail or plate armour. Gambesons were produced with a sewing technique called quilting. Usually constructed of linen or wool, the stuffing varied, and could be for example scrap cloth or horse hair. During the 14th century, illustrations usually show buttons or laces up the front.
An arming doublet (also called aketon) worn under armour, particularly plate armour of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, contains arming points for attaching plates. Fifteenth century examples may include goussets sewn into the elbows and armpits to protect the wearer in locations not covered by plate. German gothic armour arming doublets were generally shorter than Italian white armour doublets, which could extend to the upper thigh. In late fifteenth century Italy this also became a civilian fashion. Men who were not knights wore arming doublets, probably because the garment suggested status and chivalry.
Usage examples of "gambeson".
A split moment of delay bared him to a downward slice that opened his gambeson like a fishwife gutting a herring and streaked a stinging cut along the line of his ribs.
They all wore rough fighting garb, leadier, and gambesons, but no metal armor, which would make noise and warn away someone coming up through the trapdoor.
The two wore gambesons of quilted leather under embroidered surcoats that repeated the devices on the banners, and greaves and vambraces of boiled leather, but no true armor.
Freefighter troops led by Bili and two other thoheeksee was a knot of some score and a half of noblemen, some chatting or monotonously cursing, a few smoking their pipes, most rolling pebbles in dry mouths, their shirts and small clothes one soggy mass under their thick, leathern gambesons and three-quarter suits of Pitzburk.
They had shed their chain-mail hauberks and quilted gambesons, and even their shirtsbare to the waist and seemingly immune to the cold drizzle and icy winds.
And then came a whistling arrow, shot by an unsteady, drunken hand, and another, and another, none of which wounded either boy or man, since Hugo was still defended by his shirt of mail, and Humphrey wore a stout gambeson.