These words refer to the act of providing things necessary for function or use. Equip may give a technical flavour, but the provisions involved may apply to a person, a device or a place: soldiers equipped with rocket launchers; a car equipped with air conditioning; a radiogram equipped with stereo speakers; a laboratory equipped for atomic research. Outfit suggests the same range of possibilities, but is considerably more informal than equip : a battalion outfitted for tropical warfare; campers outfitted for mountain climbing; a conference room outfitted with tape recorders and sales charts. When applied to people, the word usually suggests wearing apparel, whereas equip might suggest more specialized accessories: holidaymakers outfitted for all kinds of weather and equipped with spear guns and snorkels.

Furnish applies especially to making rooms livable by the addition of furniture: furnishing the living-room with modern lounges and chairs from Denmark. Although the word most appropriately suggests this general or basic context, it can be used for more specialized circumstances: a space capsule furnished with all the materials necessary for an eight-day flight. It may also, in an abstract sense, mean to provide: activities that furnish an outlet for student opinion.

Supply is much more general than any of those other words. It can be used to suggest the addition of any provision under any circumstances: paintings that supplied the stark room with notes of warmth and colour; supplying an infantry company with all the clothing and equipment to make it battle-ready. The word, in reference to a person, would not suggest clothes worn at the moment, but might suggest their procurement.

• She was outfitted to go sightseeing in the mild spring weather; She had supplied herself with many changes of clothing to meet any possible contingency.