Definition of "pall"

Senses relating to cloth.

1. (archaic, poetic) Fine cloth, especially purple cloth used for robes.

2. A heavy cloth laid over a coffin or tomb; a shroud laid over a corpse.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • After his death he [Diocletian] remained corporeally in possession of the palace, his tomb resting in the centre of the mausoleum. Thirty years or so later, a woman was put to death for stealing the purple pall from his sarcophagus, a strange, crazy crime, […]

     1941, Rebecca West [pseudonym; Cicily Isabel Fairfield], “Dalmatia”, in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: The Record of a Journey through Yugoslavia in 1937, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., published 1946, page 153

3. (Christianity) A piece of cardboard, covered with linen and embroidered on one side, used to cover the chalice during the Eucharist.  examples

4. (Christianity, obsolete) A cloth used for various purposes on the altar in a church, such as a corporal (“cloth on which elements of the Eucharist are placed”) or frontal (“drapery covering the front of an altar”).

Senses relating to clothing.

1. (archaic) An outer garment; a cloak, mantle, or robe.  quotations

   Quotations

   • In a long purple pall, whose ſkirt with gold, / Was fretted all about, ſhe was arayd, […]

     1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, stanza 37, page 317

   • His [Hercules's] Lyons skin chaungd to a pall of gold, / In which forgetting warres, he onely ioyed / In combats of ſweet loue, and with his miſtreſſe toyed.

     1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], part II (books IV–VI), London: […] [Richard Field] for William Ponsonby, stanza 24, page 246

2. (figuratively) Something that covers or surrounds like a cloak; in particular, a cloud of dust, smoke, etc., or a feeling of fear, gloom, or suspicion.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • The smoke-pall of industrial Lancashire hung over the landscape; perhaps slagscape would be a more fitting term. The general prospect was a succession of chimney-stacks, factories, pit-heads, slagheaps, junctions, sidings and coal wagons.

     1949 January and February, F. G. Roe, “I Saw Three Englands–1”, in Railway Magazine, page 11

   • […] and the pillar of smoke which had recently begun to dissipate, as many of the fires amidships had been smothered by the onrushing water, was replaced by a vast mushroom cloud of steam, smoke, flame, and debris as the magazines detonated. In the pall of this apocalyptic destruction, the U.S. fleet takes stock.

     2021 May 5, Drachinifel, 42:53 from the start, in Battle of Samar - What if TF34 was there?‎, archived from the original on 19 August 2022

3. (Christianity) Especially in Roman Catholicism: a pallium (“liturgical vestment worn over the chasuble”).  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • By the way, a pall is a pontifical vestment, considerable for the matter, making, and mysteries thereof. […] But, to speak plainly, the mystery of mysteries in this pall was, that the archbishops' receiving it showed therein their dependence on Rome; and a mote, in this manner ceremoniously taken, was an acknowledgement of their subjection. And as it owned Rome's power, so in after-ages it increased their profit. For, though now such palls were freely given to archbishops, […] yet in after-ages the archbishop of Canterbury's pall was sold for five thousand florins: […]

     1655, Thomas Fuller, “Section II. The Seventh Century.”, in The Church-history of Britain; from the Birth of Jesus Christ, untill the Year M.DC.XLVIII, London: Printed for Iohn Williams; The Church History of Britain, […] In Three Volumes, 3rd edition, volume I, London: Printed for Thomas Tegg, […], 1842, section 38 (What a Pall is), page 107

   • Or it might be a magnificent pall, in the days in which this garment had lost its primitive character, that taxed the skill and the patience of the fair needlewoman. It was about the year a.d. 601 that Pope Gregory [I] sent two archbishop's palls into England; the one for London, which see was afterwards removed to Canterbury, and the other to York.

     1840, [Elizabeth Stone], “Needlework of the Dark Ages”, in Countess of Wilton [i.e., Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton], editor, The Art of Needle-work, from the Earliest Ages; including Some Notices of the Ancient Historical Tapestries, 2nd edition, London: Henry Colburn, publisher, […], page 66

4. (heraldry) A charge representing an archbishop's pallium, having the form of the letter Y, sometimes charged with crosses.  examples

(transitive) To cloak or cover with, or as if with, a pall.  quotations  examples

(transitive) To make vapid or insipid; to make lifeless or spiritless; to dull, to weaken.  quotations  examples

(intransitive) To become dull, insipid, tasteless, or vapid; to lose life, spirit, strength, or taste.  quotations  examples

(obsolete, rare) A feeling of nausea caused by disgust or overindulgence.  quotations