Word.ws English Dictionary

mantle

/ˈmæn.təl/

mantle noun: a piece of clothing somewhat like an open robe or cloak, especially that worn by Orthodox bishops. Also the alternative spelling of mantel.

Noun

mantle (plural mantles)

  1. A piece of clothing somewhat like an open robe or cloak, especially that worn by Orthodox bishops.
    • The people of the village all said, "It could be none but the good-natured Dwarfs, who come by night tripping along with their feet covered with long mantles, as light as birds, and industriously perform for mankind their daily work."1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume II, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 95
  2. (figuratively) A figurative garment representing authority or status, capable of affording protection.
    • At the meeting, she finally assumed the mantle of leadership of the party.
    • The movement strove to put women under the protective mantle of civil rights laws.
  3. (figuratively) Anything that covers or conceals something else; a cloak.
    • But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.c. 1599-1602, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, act 1, scene 1; republished as Hamlet, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1992, →ISBN, page 6
    • the green mantle of the standing poolc. 1605-1606, William Shakespeare, King Lear
  4. The body wall of a mollusc, from which the shell is secreted.
    • He grasps the female from slightly below about the mid-mantle region and positions himself so his arms are close to the opening of her mantle.1990, Daniel L. Gilbert, William J. Adelman, John M. Arnold (editors), Squid as Experimental Animals, page 71
    • Molluscan bodies are broadly divided into two parts: a muscular foot and a shell-secreting mantle.2017, Danna Staaf, Squid Empire, ForeEdge, →ISBN, page 8
  5. The back of a bird together with the folded wings.
  6. The zone of hot gases around a flame.
  7. A gauzy fabric impregnated with metal nitrates, used in some kinds of gas and oil lamps and lanterns, which forms a rigid but fragile mesh of metal oxides when heated during initial use and then produces white light from the heat of the flame below it. (So called because it is hung above the lamp's flame like a mantel.)
  8. The outer wall and casing of a blast furnace, above the hearth.
  9. A penstock for a water wheel.
  10. The cerebral cortex.
  11. The layer between Earth's core and crust.
    • The crust (a mere 1% of the Earth's volume) is made of lighter melt products from the mantle.2012, Chinle Miller, In Mesozoic Lands: The Mesozoic Geology of Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Kindle edition
  12. Any similar layer in an exoplanet.
  13. A mantling.

Verb

mantle (third-person singular simple present mantles, present participle mantling, simple past and past participle mantled)

  1. (transitive) To cover or conceal (something); to cloak; to disguise.
    • As the morning steals upon the night, Melting the darkness; so their rising senses Begin to chace the ign'rant fumes, that mantle Their clearer reason.1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
    • I left them I' th' filthy mantled pool beyond your cell, There dancing up to th' chins.1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
  2. (intransitive) To become covered or concealed.
  3. (intransitive) To spread like a mantle (especially of blood in the face and cheeks when a person flushes).
    • […]—that the richest people in the world have the hardest hearts in it, and refuse to help their fellow-creatures, save through the medium of ostentation, and in return for value received?—that the highest and oldest nobility in Europe—the purest blood which ever mantled in the lovely cheek of...1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XXXVII, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 171
    • […] and then that coffee! what fragrance it diffused through the room — how the foaming hot cream mantled over it, making discovered country from whose bourne no Master Philip's teeth water, […]1847, The Mirror Monthly Magazine, page 259
  4. To climb over or onto something.
  5. The action of stretching out the wings to hide food.
  6. The action of stretching a wing and the same side leg out to one side of the body.

Proper noun capitalized: Mantle

Mantle

  1. A surname.

Also used as

mantle is also the alternative spelling of mantel.

mantle meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Telugu

mantle in Hindi

मेन्टल

mantle in Tamil

மேன்டிள்

mantle in Bengali

ম্যান্টল

mantle in Telugu

మాంటిల్
More languagesFewer languages
mantle in Gujarati
મેન્ટલ
mantle in Nepali
म्यान्टल, मेन्टल, म्यान्टेल
mantle in Arabic
وِشَاح wišāḥ
mantle in Malay
mantel
mantle in Persian
بالاپوش bâlâpuš

Examples of mantle in a sentence

  • With this mantle have come prizes and money.2019 April 18, Madeleine Schwartz, “How Should a Millennial Be?”, in The New York Review, →ISSN:
  • All beneath the pinkish sky from the wildfires / Which mantle the horizon line2019, Vansire, “Metamodernity”, in Metamodernity:
  • The blood still mantled below her ears; she bent her head in shame of her humility.1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “chapter 10”, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC:

All 40 example sentences with mantle

Forms of mantle

Noun
pluralmantles
Verb
third-person singular presentmantles
present participlemantling
past participlemantled
pastmantled

Plural of mantle: mantles

Origin of mantle

From Middle English mantel, from Old English mæntel, mentel (“sleeveless cloak”), from Proto-West Germanic *mantel; later reinforced by Anglo-Norman mantel, both from Latin mantellum (“covering, cloak”) (French manteau), diminutive of mantum (Spanish manto), probably from Gaulish *mantos, *mantalos (“trodden road”), from Proto-Celtic *mantos, *mantlos, from Proto-Indo-European *menH- (“tread, press together; crumble”). Compare Icelandic möttull. Doublet of manteau.

Words formed from mantle

Phrases with mantle

4 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with mantle

Questions about mantle

What does mantle mean?
Mantle means a piece of clothing somewhat like an open robe or cloak, especially that worn by Orthodox bishops.
What is mantle in Hindi?
Mantle in Hindi is मेन्टल. See Mantle meaning in Hindi.
How do you use mantle in a sentence?
With this mantle have come prizes and money.
What part of speech is mantle?
Mantle can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce mantle?
Mantle is pronounced /ˈmæn.təl/.
What is the plural of mantle?
The plural of mantle is mantles.

Words near mantle in the dictionary

  1. mantissas
  2. mantistic
  3. mantit
  4. mantits
  5. Mantjiltjara
  6. mantle
  7. mantle field
  8. mantle leaf
  9. mantle piece
  10. mantle pieces
  11. mantle plume

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mantle (page history and authors); Mantle (page history and authors); mantle (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mantle (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mantle (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mantle (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mantle (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mantle (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-mantle.ogg, en-au-mantle.ogg.

Cite this entry: “mantle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mantle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.