cerement

English

Etymology

From French cirement (“waxing, wax dressing”), from cirer (“to wax, wrap”).

Noun

cerement (plural cerements)

1. (often plural) A burial shroud or garment.
   • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii], page 257, column 1:

     […] ; but tell / Why thy Canoniz’d bones Hearſed in death, / Haue burſt their cerments, why the Sepulcher / Wherein we ſaw thee quietly enurn’d, / Hath op’d his ponderous and Marble iawes, / To caſt thee vp againe?

   • 1834, Lydia Sigourney, Poems, Barzillai the Gileadite, page 26:

     Oh! when his sacred dust
     The cerements of the tomb shall burst,
     Might I be worthy at his feet to rise,
     To yonder blissful skies,
     Where angel-hosts resplendent shine,
     Jehovah!—Lord of Hosts, the glory shall be thine.

   • 1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, hardback edition, page 77

     "Who is the woman in the cerements?", she inconsequently wondered.

   • 1921, Sir James George Frazer, Apollodorus: The Library (Loeb Classical Library), volume I, Introduction, § 1: “The Author and His Book”, page xxvii:

     The cerements still cling to their wasted frames, but will soon be exchanged for a gayer garb in their passage from the tomb to the temple.

2. (specifically) Cerecloth.

Quotations

• 1971, Anthony Burgess, M/F, Penguin, published 2004, page 62:

  Her red robe billowed, all in wood, except where the great phallic spike of her martyrdom had called forth blood to tack the cerement to her body.

Synonyms

• winding clothes
• winding sheet
• pall

Derived terms

• unceremented

Translations

burial shroud or garment

• Bulgarian: саван (bg) m (savan)
• Macedonian: са́ван m (sávan)

cerecloth — see cerecloth

Anagrams

• cementer, re-cement, recement