Noah Webster
Armed
'ARMED, participle passive
1. Furnished with weapons of offense or defense; furnished with the means of security; fortified, in a moral sense.
2. In heraldry, armed is when the beaks, talons, horns, or teeth of beasts and birds of prey are of a different color from the rest of the body.
3. Capped and cased as the load stone; that is set in iron.
An armed ship is one which is taken into the service of government for a particular occasion, and armed like a ship of war.