cloak
UK/kləʊk//kloʊk/
cloak noun: a long outer garment worn over the shoulders covering the back; a cape, often with a hood.
Noun
cloak (plural cloaks)
- A long outer garment worn over the shoulders covering the back; a cape, often with a hood.
- ‘It's rather like a beautiful Inverness cloak one has inherited. Much too good to hide away, so one wears it instead of an overcoat and pretends it's an amusing new fashion.’1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 5, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC
- A blanket-like covering, often metaphorical.
- Night hid her movements with its cloak of darkness.
- That which conceals; a disguise or pretext.
- For neither at any time vſed wee flattering wordes, as yee knowe, nor a cloke of couetouſneſſe, God is witneſſe: […]1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 1 Thessalonians 2:5, column 1
- And no Man is eſteemed any ways conſiderable for Policy, who wears Religion otherwiſe than as a Cloak; that is, as ſuch a Garment as may both cover and keep him warm, and yet hang looſe upon him too.1676 May 9 (date delivered; Gregorian calendar); first published 1692, Robert South, “A Sermon Preached at Westminster-Abbey”, in Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions. […], volume I...
- A text replacement for an IRC user's hostname or IP address, making the user less identifiable.
Verb
cloak (third-person singular simple present cloaks, present participle cloaking, simple past and past participle cloaked)
- To cover as with or like a cloak.
- He would hold her, just hold her, while his hands soothed the bare skin of her arms and the delicate fabric that cloaked her shoulders and her back.2008, Bronwyn Jameson, Vows & a Vengeful Groom, Silhouette Books, →ISBN, page 122
- To cover up, hide or conceal.
- It’s possible that some microbes don’t just take up residence in tumors but help them grow. They may cloak the tumor from the immune system, neutralize drugs or help tumors spread through the body.2022 September 29, Carl Zimmer, “A New Approach to Spotting Tumors: Look for Their Microbes”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 01 Dec 2022
- To render or become invisible via futuristic technology.
- The ship cloaked before entering the enemy sector of space.
cloak meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
cloak in Hindi
- cape
- चोग़ा coġā
cloak in Tamil
- blanket-like covering, often metaphorical
- போர்வை pōrvai
cloak in Marathi
- झगा
cloak in Urdu
- عبا, چوغہ, فرغل, لبادہ, چڑھنا, سوار ہونا
More languagesFewer languages
- cloak in Telugu
- ఉత్తరీయము uttarīyamu
- cloak in Malayalam
- മേലങ്കി, അങ്കി, അംഗവസ്ത്രം, കുുപ്പായം
- cloak in Kannada
- ಹೊರ ಅಂಗಿ, ಮೇಲಂಗಿ, ತೋಳಿಲ್ಲದ ನಿಲುವಂಗಿ, ಕವುದಿ
- cloak in Sanskrit
- अत्क atka
- cloak in Pashto
- څادر śâdar
- cloak in Arabic
- مِعْطَف فَضْفَاض miʕṭaf faḍfāḍ
- cloak in Persian
- قبا qabâ, یلمه yalme, فرچی farači, فرغل farġol
Examples of cloak in a sentence
- The cloak was shot through with silver threads.
- He was a tall dark man, cloaked in mystery.
- Similarily, the femosphere possesses intellectual mouthpieces who cloak reactionary perspectives with an intellectual and scientific façade.
Forms of cloak
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | cloaks |
| alternative form (obsolete) | cloke |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | cloaks |
| present participle | cloaking |
| past participle | cloaked |
| past | cloaked |
Origin of cloak
From Middle English cloke, from Old Northern French cloque (“travelling cloak”), from Medieval Latin clocca (“travelers' cape, literally “a bell”, so called from the garment’s bell-like shape”), of Celtic origin, from Proto-Celtic *klokkos, ultimately imitative. Doublet of cloche and clock.
Words formed from cloak
- becloak
- boat cloak
- cloak-and-dagger
- cloak-and-sworder
- cloak bag
- cloaked
- cloak fern
- cloakless
- cloaklet
- cloaklike
- cloakmaker
- cloakmaking
- cloak room
- cloakroom
- cloakwise
- decloak
- discloak
- drunkard's cloak
- mourning cloak
- Newcastle cloak
- opera cloak
- overcloak
- turncloak
- undercloak
- uncloak
- cloakable
- cloaking device
- recloak
Phrases with cloak
Words that rhyme with cloak
Questions about cloak
- What does cloak mean?
- Cloak means a long outer garment worn over the shoulders covering the back; a cape, often with a hood.
- What is cloak in Hindi?
- Cloak in Hindi is चोग़ा (coġā). See Cloak meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is cloak?
- Cloak can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce cloak?
- Cloak is pronounced /kləʊk/ (UK).
- What is the plural of cloak?
- The plural of cloak is cloaks.
Words near cloak in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cloak (page history and authors); cloak (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); cloak (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ఉత్తరీయము (Telugu) (page history and authors); cloak (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); cloak (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); څادر (Pashto) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-cloak.ogg.
Cite this entry: “cloak.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cloak. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.