Word.ws English Dictionary

pall

UK/pɔːl/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/poːl/

pall noun: fine cloth, especially purple cloth used for robes. Also the alternative form of pawl.

Noun (1)

pall (plural palls)

  1. (archaic, poetic) Fine cloth, especially purple cloth used for robes.
  2. A heavy cloth laid over a coffin or tomb; a shroud laid over a corpse.
    • After his death he [Diocletian] remained corporeally in possession of the palace, his tomb resting in the centre of the mausoleum. Thirty years or so later, a woman was put to death for stealing the purple pall from his sarcophagus, a strange, crazy crime, […]1941, Rebecca West [pseudonym; Cicily Isabel Fairfield], “Dalmatia”, in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: The Record of a Journey through Yugoslavia in 1937, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., published...
  3. A piece of cardboard, covered with linen and embroidered on one side, used to cover the chalice during the Eucharist.
  4. (obsolete) A cloth used for various purposes on the altar in a church, such as a corporal (“cloth on which elements of the Eucharist are placed”) or frontal (“drapery covering the front of an altar”).
  5. (archaic) An outer garment; a cloak, mantle, or robe.
    • In a long purple pall, whose ſkirt with gold, / Was fretted all about, ſhe was arayd, […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 37, page 317
    • His [Hercules's] Lyons skin chaungd to a pall of gold, / In which forgetting warres, he onely ioyed / In combats of ſweet loue, and with his miſtreſſe toyed.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], part II (books IV–VI), London: […] [Richard Field] for William Ponsonby, →OCLC, stanza 24, page 246
  6. (figuratively) Something that covers or surrounds like a cloak; in particular, a cloud of dust, smoke, etc., or a feeling of fear, gloom, or suspicion.
    • The early election results cast a pall over what was supposed to be a celebration.
    • A pall came over the crowd when the fourth goal was scored.
  7. Especially in Roman Catholicism: a pallium (“liturgical vestment worn over the chasuble”).
    • By the way, a pall is a pontifical vestment, considerable for the matter, making, and mysteries thereof. […] But, to speak plainly, the mystery of mysteries in this pall was, that the archbishops' receiving it showed therein their dependence on Rome; and a mote, in this manner ceremoniously taken...1655, Thomas Fuller, “Section II. The Seventh Century.”, in The Church-history of Britain; from the Birth of Jesus Christ, untill the Year M.DC.XLVIII, London: Printed for Iohn Williams, →OCLC; The...
    • Or it might be a magnificent pall, in the days in which this garment had lost its primitive character, that taxed the skill and the patience of the fair needlewoman. It was about the year a.d. 601 that Pope Gregory [I] sent two archbishop's palls into England; the one for London, which see was...1840, [Elizabeth Stone], “Needlework of the Dark Ages”, in Countess of Wilton [i.e., Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton], editor, The Art of Needle-work, from the Earliest Ages; including Some Notices of...
  8. A charge representing an archbishop's pallium, having the form of the letter Y, sometimes charged with crosses.
    • The flag of South Africa has a green pall
    Synonyms:
    cross-pall, pairle

Verb (1)

pall (third-person singular simple present palls, present participle palling, simple past and past participle palled)

  1. (transitive) To cloak or cover with, or as if with, a pall.
    • Come, thick Night, / And pall thee in the dunneſt ſmoake of Hell, / That my keene Knife ſee not the Wound it makes, / Nor Heauen peepe through the Blanket of the darke, / To cry, hold, hold.c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...

Verb (2)

pall (third-person singular simple present palls, present participle palling, simple past and past participle palled)

  1. (transitive) To make vapid or insipid; to make lifeless or spiritless; to dull, to weaken.
    • […] Reaſon and Reflection, which by repreſenting perpetually to the mind of Man the meanneſs of all ſenſual Gratifications, do, in great meaſure, blunt the edge of his keeneſt Deſires, and pall all his Enjoyments.1706 August 30, Francis Atterbury, A Sermon Preach’d in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul; at the Funeral of Mr. Tho. Bennet, August 30. 1706, London: Printed and sold by H. Hills, […], published...
  2. (intransitive) To become dull, insipid, tasteless, or vapid; to lose life, spirit, strength, or taste.
    • The liquor palls.
    • [T]he ale and byere haue palled, and were nought, by cause such ale and biere hathe taken wynde in spurgyng.[c. 1440, Galfrido Grammatico [i.e., Geoffrey the Grammarian], “Pallyd”, in Albert Way, editor, Promptorium parvulorum sive clericorum, dictionarius Anglo–Latinus princeps, […] [Storehouse for...

Noun (2)

pall (plural palls)

  1. (obsolete, rare) A feeling of nausea caused by disgust or overindulgence.
    • Tho the Impatience of abſtaining be greater; the Pleaſure of Indulgence is really leſs. The Palls or Nauseatings which continually intervene, are of the worſt and moſt hateful kind of Senſation. Hardly is there any thing taſted which is wholly free from this ill reliſh of a ſurfeited Senſe and...1699, [Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury], An Inquiry Concerning Virtue: In Two Discourses, […], London: Printed for A. Bell … E. Castle … and S. Buckley, →OCLC; republished as “Treatise...

Proper noun capitalized: Pall

Pall (plural Palls)

  1. A surname.

Also used as

pall is also the alternative form of pawl.

Examples of pall in a sentence

  • The smoke-pall of industrial Lancashire hung over the landscape; perhaps slagscape would be a more fitting term.1949 January and February, F. G. Roe, “I Saw Three Englands–1”, in Railway Magazine, page 11:
  • In the pall of this apocalyptic destruction, the U.S. fleet takes stock.2021 May 5, Drachinifel, 42:53 from the start, in Battle of Samar - What if TF34 was there?, archived from the original on 19 Aug 2022:
  • For, though now such palls were freely given to archbishops, […] yet in after-ages the archbishop of Canterbury's pall was sold for five thousand florins: […]1655, Thomas Fuller, “Section II. The Seventh Century.”, in The Church-history of Britain; from the Birth of Jesus Christ, untill the Year...
  • Or it might be a magnificent pall, in the days in which this garment had lost its primitive character, that taxed the skill and the patience of the fair needlewoman.1840, [Elizabeth Stone], “Needlework of the Dark Ages”, in Countess of Wilton [i.e., Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton], editor, The Art of...

All 20 example sentences with pall

Synonyms of pall

Forms of pall

Noun
pluralpalls
Verb
third-person singular presentpalls
present participlepalling
past participlepalled
pastpalled
Proper noun
pluralPalls

Plural of pall: palls

Origin of pall

From Middle English pal, palle, from Old English pæl, pæll, from Old French paile and Latin pallium (“cloak; covering”) (and thus a doublet of pallium), probably from palla (“piece of cloth worn as apparel”) (possibly from Proto-Indo-European *pel- (“to cover, wrap; hide, skin; cloth”)) + -ium (suffix forming abstract nouns).

From the noun pall (“cloth”).

Formed by aphesis from appal, appall (“(obsolete) to make pale; to weaken; to become weak; to lose flavour or become stale”), possibly under the influence of the figurative meaning of the unrelated noun pall. Alternatively, the word may be derived from Middle English pallen (“to diminish, impair, weaken; to become faint; to lose spirit”), formed by aphesis from apallen (“to become or make faint or tired; to become indifferent; to fade or cause to fade away; to dim, weaken; to become stale; to be frightened; to frighten; to become pale”), from Old French apalir (“to become or cause to become pale”), possibly from Latin pallidus (“pale, pallid; pale with fright, frightened; mouldy, musty”), from palleō (“to be pale, turn pale; to be anxious or fearful; to fade or change colour”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pel-, *pelH- (“grey; pale”)) + -idus (suffix meaning ‘tending to’ forming adjectives).

Words formed from pall

Phrases with pall

Words that rhyme with pall

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about pall

What does pall mean?
Pall means fine cloth, especially purple cloth used for robes.
How do you use pall in a sentence?
The smoke-pall of industrial Lancashire hung over the landscape; perhaps slagscape would be a more fitting term.
What part of speech is pall?
Pall can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce pall?
Pall is pronounced /pɔːl/ (UK).
What is the plural of pall?
The plural of pall is palls.

Words near pall in the dictionary

  1. palkis
  2. Palko
  3. Palko test
  4. Palko tests
  5. Palkos
  6. pall
  7. pall inverted
  8. pall mall
  9. Pall Malls
  10. pall on
  11. pall reversed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pall (page history and authors); Pall (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-pall.ogg.

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