shrouds

Noun

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
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...
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
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.

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