shroud

From Old English scrūd, from Proto-Germanic *skrūdą. Cognate with Old Norse skrúð (“the shrouds of a ship”) ( > Danish, Norwegian skrud (“splendid attire”)).

• IPA^(key): /ʃɹaʊd/
• Rhymes: -aʊd

shroud (plural shrouds)

1. That which clothes, covers, conceals, or protects; a garment.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Sandys

     swaddled, as new born, in sable shrouds

   • 2019 April 25, Samanth Subramanian, “Hand dryers v paper towels: the surprisingly dirty fight for the right to dry your hands”, in The Guardian‎:

     Every time we came a research area, we had to pause while the scientists threw grey shrouds over prototypes that I wasn’t to see.

2. Especially, the dress for the dead; a winding sheet.
   • 1826, Mary Shelley, The Last Man, volume 3, chapter 2

     Yet let us goǃ England is in her shroud - we may not enchain ourselves to a corpse.

   • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare

     a dead man in his shroud

3. That which covers or shelters like a shroud.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Byron

     Jura answers through her misty shroud.

4. A covered place used as a retreat or shelter, as a cave or den; also, a vault or crypt.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Chapman

     The shroud to which he won / His fair-eyed oxen.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Withals

     a vault, or shroud, as under a church

5. The branching top of a tree; foliage.
   • 1611, King James Bible, “xxxi.iii”, in Ezekiel‎, Barker edition:

     Behold, the Assyrian was a Cedar in Lebanon with faire branches, and with a shadowing shrowd, and of an hie stature, and his top was among the thicke boughes.

6. (nautical) A rope or cable serving to support the mast sideways.
   • See also Wikipedia article on Shroud (sailing)
7. One of the two annular plates at the periphery of a water wheel, which form the sides of the buckets; a shroud plate.

• sindon

shroud (third-person singular simple present shrouds, present participle shrouding, simple past and past participle shrouded)

1. To cover with a shroud.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Francis Bacon

     The ancient Egyptian mummies were shrouded in a number of folds of linen besmeared with gums.

2. To conceal or hide from view, as if by a shroud.

   The details of the plot were shrouded in mystery.

   The truth behind their weekend retreat was shrouded in obscurity.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Sir Walter Raleigh

     One of these trees, with all his young ones, may shroud four hundred horsemen.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Dryden

     Some tempest rise, / And blow out all the stars that light the skies, / To shroud my shame.

3. To take shelter or harbour.
   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     If your stray attendance be yet lodged, / Or shroud within these limits.