shroud
/ˈʃɹaʊ̯d/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.17 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Especially, the dress for the dead; a winding sheet.
noun
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.
noun
One of the two annular plates at the periphery of a water wheel, which form the sides of the buckets; a shroud plate.
noun
A streamlined protective covering used to protect the payload during a rocket-powered launch.
verb
To cover with a shroud.
Example Sentences
- "swaddled, as new born, in sable shrouds"
- "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."
- "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 […]"
- "Yet let us goǃ England is in her shroud – we may not enchain ourselves to a corpse."
- "The obstructive tendency attributed to the knot in spiritual matters appears in a Swiss superstition that if, in sewing a corpse into its shroud, you make a knot on the thread, it will hinder the soul of the deceased on its passage to eternity."
- "This is Radio Clash, you don't need that funeral shroud"
Etymology
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”)).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: shroud, sċrūd, *skrūdą, schrouden, schroud
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈʃɹaʊ̯d/
- British English: /ˈʃɹaʊ̯d/
Usage
- British usage
- Transitive verb