cerement

English

Etymology

From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] French cirement (“waxing, wax dressing”), from cirer (“to wax, wrap”).

Noun

cerement (plural cerements)

1. A burial shroud or garment.
2. Cerecloth.

Quotations

• c. 1600, Shakespeare, Hamlet

  Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, have burst their cerements.

• 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.

• 1971 Anthony Burgess, M/F, Penguin 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

Translations

burial shroud or garment

• Bulgarian: саван (bg) m (savan)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}

cerecloth — see cerecloth

Anagrams

• cementer, re-cement, recement