pallium

Noun

pallium (plural pallia or palliums)

1. (historical) A large cloak worn by Greek philosophers and teachers.
2. A woolen liturgical vestment resembling a collar and worn over the chasuble in the Western Christian liturgical tradition, conferred on archbishops by the Pope, equivalent to the Eastern Christian omophorion.
   • Tut, tut, I have absolved thee: dost thou scorn me, / Because I had my Canterbury pallium / From one whom they dispoped?1877, Alfred Tennyson, Harold: A Drama, London: Henry S. King & Co., →OCLC, Act III, scene i, page 76
   • Gregory sent Augustine a special liturgical stole, the pallium, a piece of official ecclesiastical dress borrowed from the garments worn by imperial officials.2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 339
3. The mantle of a mollusc.
4. The cerebral cortex.
5. A presumed gelatinous envelope of diatoms.
6. (obsolete) A sheet of cloud covering the whole sky, especially nimbostratus.
7. The membrane which stretches across the inner walls of the subgenital plate and covers the aedeagus of a grasshopper.