Word.ws English Dictionary

shroud

/ˈʃɹæʊ̯d//ˈʃɹaʊ̯d/

shroud noun: that which clothes, covers, conceals, or protects; a garment.

Noun (1)

shroud (plural shrouds)

  1. That which clothes, covers, conceals, or protects; a garment.
    • swaddled, as new born, in sable shrouds1636, George Sandys, Paraphrase upon the Psalms and Hymns dispersed throughout the Old and New Testaments
    • 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.2019 April 25, Samanth Subramanian, “Hand dryers v paper towels: the surprisingly dirty fight for the right to dry your hands”, in The Guardian
  2. Especially, the dress for the dead; a winding sheet.
    • O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,
      From off the battlements of any tower, […]
      Or bid me go into a new-made grave
      And hide me with a dead man in his shroud […]c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
    • Yet let us goǃ England is in her shroud – we may not enchain ourselves to a corpse.1826, [Mary Shelley], chapter II, in The Last Man. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC
  3. That which covers or shelters like a shroud.
    • Jura answers through her misty shroud.1812–1818, Lord Byron, “(please specify |canto=I to IV)”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. A Romaunt, London: […] [F]or John Murray, […]; William Blackwood, Edinburgh; and John Cumming, Dublin; by...
  4. A covered place used as a retreat or shelter, as a cave or den; also, a vault or crypt.
    • The shroud to which he won / His fair-eyed oxen.c. 1618, George Chapman, Hymns of Homer
    • a vault, or shroud, as under a church1554, John Withals, A Dictionarie in English and Latine
  5. One of a set of ropes or cables (rigging) attaching a mast to the sides of a vessel or to another anchor point, serving to support the mast sideways; such rigging collectively.
    • Then - a shock of water, a wild rush of boiling foam, and I was clinging for my life to the shroud, ay, swept straight out from it like a flag in a gale.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
  6. One of the two annular plates at the periphery of a water wheel, which form the sides of the buckets; a shroud plate.
  7. A streamlined protective covering used to protect the payload during a rocket-powered launch.

Verb (1)

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

  1. To cover with a shroud.
    • The ancient Egyptian mummies were shrouded in a number of folds of linen besmeared with gums.1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the page, or |century=I to X)”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted...
    • The sliding door, which is fitted with a drop light, is shrouded with bristle-type draught excluders.1954 February, “Third Class Corridor Brake Coaches for British Railways”, in Railway Magazine, pages 132-133
  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.
  3. To take shelter or harbour.
    • [T]hough this my vvorke, ovvne not vvorth enough to deſerve your patronage, yet ſuch is your benigne humanity, that I am confident you vvill daigne it your protection, under vvhich it vvillingly ſhrovvdes it ſelfe.1634, William Wood, “To the Right Worshipfull, My Much Honored Friend, Sir William Armyne, Knight and Baronet”, in New Englands Prospect. A True, Lively, and Experimentall Description of that Part of...
    • If your stray attendance be yet lodged, / Or shroud within these limits.1634 October 9 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey...

Noun (2)

shroud (plural shrouds)

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

Verb (2)

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

  1. (UK, dialectal, transitive) To lop the branches from (a tree).

shroud meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

shroud in Hindi

shroud
कफ़न kafan

shroud in Marathi

कफन

shroud in Urdu

کفن

shroud in Bengali

কাফন, আবরণ, অস্পষ্ট করে দেওয়া পর্দা
More languagesFewer languages
shroud in Malayalam
പ്രേതവസ്ത്രം, കച്ച, മൃതശരീരത്തെ പുതപ്പിക്കുന്ന കോടിവസ്ത്രം, ശവക്കച്ച
shroud in Kannada
ಶವಗಳನ್ನು ಮುಚ್ಚುವ ಬಟ್ಟೆ, ಶವವಸ್ತ್ರ, ಪರದೆ, ಮುಸುಕು
shroud in Punjabi
ਚਾਦਰ cādar
shroud in Gujarati
કફન kaphan, ખાંપણ khā̃paṇ
shroud in Pashto
څادر śâdar
shroud in Tagalog
lalab
shroud in Arabic
كفن kafan
shroud in Malay
kafan
shroud in Indonesian
kafan
shroud in Persian
کفن kefen
shroud in Vietnamese
vải liệm, liệm

Examples of shroud in a sentence

  • This is Radio Clash, you don't need that funeral shroud1981, “This Is Radio Clash”, performed by The Clash:
  • One of these trees, with all his young ones, may shroud four hundred horsemen.1614, Walter Ralegh [i.e., Walter Raleigh], The Historie of the World […], London: […] William Stansby for Walter Burre, […], →OCLC...

All 40 example sentences with shroud

Synonyms of shroud

All synonyms of shroud

Forms of shroud

Noun
pluralshrouds
Verb
third-person singular presentshrouds
present participleshrouding
past participleshrouded
pastshrouded

Past tense of shroud: shrouded

Plural of shroud: shrouds

Origin of shroud

From Middle English shroud, from Old English sċrūd, from Proto-Germanic *skrūdą (“shroud, dress, attire”). Compare Proto-Germanic *skrūdijaną (“to shroud”). Cognate with Old Norse skrúð, Swedish skrud (“shroud”), Danish and Norwegian skrud (“splendid attire”)).

From Middle English schrouden (> Anglo-Latin scrudāre), from Middle English schroud (“shroud”) (see above).

Variant of shred.

Words formed from shroud

Phrases with shroud

Words that rhyme with shroud

20 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about shroud

What does shroud mean?
Shroud means that which clothes, covers, conceals, or protects; a garment.
What is shroud in Hindi?
Shroud in Hindi is कफ़न (kafan). See Shroud meaning in Hindi.
How do you use shroud in a sentence?
This is Radio Clash, you don't need that funeral shroud
What part of speech is shroud?
Shroud can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce shroud?
Shroud is pronounced /ˈʃɹaʊ̯d/ (UK).
What is the plural of shroud?
The plural of shroud is shrouds.

Words near shroud in the dictionary

  1. shropsavine
  2. shropsavines
  3. Shropshire
  4. Shropshire Blue
  5. Shropshires
  6. shroud
  7. shroud knot
  8. shroud knots
  9. shroud-laid
  10. shroud-waving
  11. shrouded

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shroud (page history and authors); कफ़न (Hindi) (page history and authors); shroud (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); shroud (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shroud (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shroud (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); shroud (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਚਾਦਰ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); કફન (Gujarati) (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-shroud.wav.

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