• IPA: /ʃɹaʊd/

shroud (plural shrouds)

1. That which clothes, covers, conceals, or protects; a garment.

   • swaddled, as new born, in sable shrouds

2. Especially, the dress for the dead; a winding sheet.
   • 1826, Mary Shelley, The Last Man, volume 3, chapter 2

     Yet let us goǃ England is in her shroud - we may not enchain ourselves to a corpse.

   • c. 1591–1595, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act IV, scene i]:

     a dead man in his shroud

3. That which covers or shelters like a shroud.

   • Jura answers through her misty shroud.

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.

   • a vault, or shroud, as under a church

5. (nautical) A rope or cable serving to support the mast sideways.
6. One of the two annular plates at the periphery of a water wheel, which form the sides of the buckets; a shroud plate.

• sindon

• French: linceul, suaire
• German: Leichentuch
• Italian: sudario, sindone
• Portuguese: mortalha, sudário
• Russian: са́ван
• Spanish: sudario, mortaja

• French: hauban
• German: Want
• Italian: sartia
• Portuguese: brandal
• Russian: ва́нты
• Spanish: obenquillo

shroud (shrouds, present participle shrouding; past and past participle shrouded)

1. To cover with a shroud.
   • 1626, Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, Or, A Naturall Historie: In Ten Centuries

     The ancient Egyptian mummies were shrouded in a number of folds of linen besmeared with gums.

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.

   • 1614, Walter Raleigh, Historie of the World

     One of these trees, with all his young ones, may shroud four hundred horsemen.

   • Some tempest rise, / And blow out all the stars that light the skies, / To shroud my shame.

3. To take shelter or harbour.
   • 1634 October 9 (first performance)​, [John Milton], H[enry] Lawes, editor, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: Printed [by Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, OCLC 228715864 ↗; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, OCLC 1113942837 ↗:

     If your stray attendance be yet lodged, / Or shroud within these limits.

• Italian: velare, celare

shroud (plural shrouds)

1. The branching top of a tree; foliage.

shroud (shrouds, present participle shrouding; past and past participle shrouded)

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

   Synonyms: shrood