A Shroud Was Simply a Garment
A shroud is a burial cloth. The word once meant any clothing or shelter, and at sea it still names the ropes that hold a mast upright.
A shroud is the cloth in which a body is wrapped for burial. The narrowing is severe: in Old English the word meant a garment, and by extension any shelter or covering, with no connection to death at all. The funeral sense took over only in the 1500s. The oldest meaning survives at sea, where a ship's shrouds are the standing ropes bracing the mast.
- A burial cloth. *A linen shroud.*
- Anything that conceals. *A shroud of fog.*
- Verb, to conceal. *The deal was shrouded in secrecy.*
- Nautical, mast rigging. *He climbed the shrouds.*
- On a parachute — the lines to the canopy. *Shroud lines.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | shroud | A plain shroud. |
| Plural | shrouds | The mast shrouds. |
| Verb | shroud | Mist shrouds the hill. |
| Past | shrouded | Shrouded in mystery. |
| Related | shred | A shred of cloth. |
- The body was wrapped in a simple shroud.Burial.
- The valley was shrouded in cloud.Concealment.
- The negotiations were shrouded in secrecy.The commonest figurative use.
Words that narrowed like this
- Shroud — any garment, now a burial cloth
- Meat — any food, now flesh
- Deer — any animal, now one family
- Starve — to die, now to die of hunger
- Girl — a young person of either sex, now female
Old English *scrud*, a garment, from a Germanic root also connected with *shred*. The burial sense appears in the 1500s and quickly became dominant.
Why are a ship's ropes called shrouds?
From the older meaning of covering or protecting. The shrouds enclose and brace the mast on both sides.
What does shrouded in mystery mean?
Hidden or obscured, as if wrapped in cloth. It is the most common figurative use of the verb.