mantle
/ˈmæn.təl/ noun C1- A piece of clothing somewhat like an open robe or cloak, especially that worn by Orthodox bishops.
- A figurative garment representing authority or status, capable of affording protection. · At the meeting, she finally assumed the mantle of leadership of the party.· The movement strove to put women under the protective mantle of civil rights laws.
- Anything that covers or conceals something else; a cloak.
- The body wall of a mollusc, from which the shell is secreted.
- The back of a bird together with the folded wings.
- The zone of hot gases around a flame.
- A gauzy fabric impregnated with metal nitrates, used in some kinds of gas and oil lamps and lanterns, which forms a rigid but fragile mesh of metal oxides when heated during initial use and then produces white light from the heat of the flame below it. (So called because it is hung above the lamp's flame like a mantel.)
- The outer wall and casing of a blast furnace, above the hearth.
Plural mantles
From the library
I assure you once for all that I did not mean to intoxicate Diana and henceforth I shall cover the past with the mantle of oblivion.’ That was a pretty dignified way of speaking wasn’t it, Marilla?”
Time, which encrusts all physical substances with its mossy mantle, as it invests all things of the mind with forgetfulness, seemed to have respected these signs, which apparently had been made with some degree of regularity, and probably with a definite purpose.
He wore a large brown mantle, one fold of which, thrown over his left shoulder, served likewise to mask the lower part of his countenance, while the upper part was completely hidden by his broad-brimmed hat.
Some few minutes had elapsed, and the stranger began to show manifest signs of impatience, when a slight noise was heard outside the aperture in the roof, and almost immediately a dark shadow seemed to obstruct the flood of light that had entered it, and the figure of a man was clearly seen gazing with eager scrutiny on the immense space beneath him; then, as his eye caught sight of him in the mantle, he grasped a floating mass of thickly matted boughs, and glided down by their help to within three or four feet of the ground, and then leaped lightly on his feet.
Other matches
Learn mantle in real texts
With a free account, hover any word in the library for its meaning, hear it read aloud, save words for review timed to your memory, and see how much of each book you already know.