Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To become insipid, boring, or wearisome.
  • intransitive verb To have a dulling, wearisome, or boring effect.
  • intransitive verb To become cloyed or satiated.
  • intransitive verb To cloy; satiate.
  • intransitive verb To make vapid or wearisome.
  • noun A cover for a coffin, bier, or tomb, often made of black, purple, or white velvet.
  • noun A coffin, especially one being carried to a grave or tomb.
  • noun A covering that darkens or obscures.
  • noun A gloomy effect or atmosphere.
  • noun A linen cloth or a square of cardboard faced with cloth used to cover the chalice.
  • transitive verb To cover with or as if with a pall.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See pal.
  • noun In India, a small tent made by stretching canvas or cotton stuff over a ridge-pole supported on uprights.
  • noun An outer garment; a cloak; a mantle.
  • noun Specifically — A robe put on a king at his coronation.
  • noun Same as pallium, 2.
  • noun Fine cloth, such as was used for the robes of nobles. Also called cloth of pall.
  • noun A curtain or covering.
  • noun Specifically— A cloth or covering thrown over a coffin, bier, tomb, etc.: as, a funeral pall. At the present time this is black, purple, or white; it is sometimes enriched with embroidery or with heraldic devices.
  • noun A canopy.
  • noun An altar-cloth.
  • noun A linen altar-cloth; especially, a corporal.
  • noun A linen cloth used to cover the chalice; a chalice-pall. This is now the usual meaning of pall as a piece of altar-linen. Formerly one corner of the corporal covered the chalice; the use of a separate pall, however, is as old as the twelfth century. The pall is now a small square piece of cardboard faced on both sides with linen or lawn. In carrying the holy vessels to and from the altar, the pall, covered with the veil, supports the burse, and itself rests on the paten and the paten on the chalice.
  • noun A covering of silk or other material for the front of an altar; a frontal.
  • noun Figuratively, gloom: in allusion to the funeral pall.
  • noun In heraldry, the suggestion of an episcopal pall; a Y-shaped form, said to be composed of half a saltier and half a pale, and therefore in width one fifth of the height of the escutcheon: it is sometimes, though rarely, represented reversed, and is always charged with crosses patté fitché to express its ecclesiastical origin. Also pairle.
  • noun Nausea or nauseation.
  • To become vapid, as wine or ale; lose taste, life, or spirit; become insipid; hence, to become distasteful, wearisome, etc.
  • To make vapid or insipid.
  • To make spiritless; dispirit; depress; weaken; impair.
  • noun See pawl.
  • To cover with or as with a pall; cover or invest; shroud.
  • To knock; knock down; beat; thrust.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb rare To cloak.
  • intransitive verb To become vapid, tasteless, dull, or insipid; to lose strength, life, spirit, or taste.
  • transitive verb To make vapid or insipid; to make lifeless or spiritless; to dull; to weaken.
  • transitive verb To satiate; to cloy.
  • noun obsolete Nausea.
  • noun An outer garment; a cloak mantle.
  • noun obsolete A kind of rich stuff used for garments in the Middle Ages.
  • noun (R. C. Ch.) Same as Pallium.
  • noun (Her.) A figure resembling the Roman Catholic pallium, or pall, and having the form of the letter Y.
  • noun A large cloth, esp., a heavy black cloth, thrown over a coffin at a funeral; sometimes, also, over a tomb.
  • noun (Eccl.) A piece of cardboard, covered with linen and embroidered on one side; -- used to put over the chalice.
  • noun Same as pawl.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb to make vapid or insipid; to make lifeless or spiritless; to dull; to weaken
  • noun archaic fine cloth, especially purple cloth used for robes

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English pallen, to grow feeble, probably short for appallen; see appall.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English pal, from Old English pæll, cloak, covering, from Latin pallium.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Aphetism from appall.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English pæll, from Latin pallium ‘cloak, covering’.

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Examples

  • But to me one of the most troubling aspects of the current administration's pall is the attempt by its followers to supress any kind of dissent, especially if it is laced with humor.

    January 2004 2004

  • It was almost impossible to people, in fancy, the tattered and neglected churchyard of Beaconsfield as it now is -- with those who swelled the funeral pomp of the greatest ornament of the British senate; to imagine the titled pall-bearers, where the swine were tumbling over graves, and rooting at headstones.

    The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 Various

  • The government, meanwhile, was to auction 15 billion pounds in Treasury bills on Monday, a step that economists expected would draw in mostly domestic banks after the protests of the past couple of weeks appeared likely to cast an at least short-term pall on the investment climate in the country.

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2011

  • The government, meanwhile, was to auction 15 billion pounds $2.5 billion in Treasury bills on Monday, a step that economists expected would draw in mostly domestic banks after the protests of the past couple of weeks appeared likely to cast an at least short-term pall on the investment climate in the country.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com The Huffington Post News Editors 2011

  • The government, meanwhile, was to auction 15 billion pounds $2.5 billion in Treasury bills on Monday, a step that economists expected would draw in mostly domestic banks after the protests of the past couple of weeks appeared likely to cast an at least short-term pall on the investment climate in the country.

    The Seattle Times 2011

  • Reynolds, the favourite of Edward II., but it also affords food for discussion, as there is no trace of the "pall" -- a Y-shaped strip of lamb's wool marked with crosses, a special mark of metropolitan dignity which was sent to each primate by the Pope -- on the vestments of the effigy.

    The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. Hartley Withers 1908

  • I can still recall the pall of fear that spread over the town. ­

    Evil Called at School George H. Gurley 2009

  • He then covers this host with a white card, called a pall, after which he covers the chalice and all with a square cloth or veil that matches the vestments.

    Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) An Explanation of the Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine Thomas L. Kinkead

  • The pall is a small square of stiffened linen ornamented with a cross, which is laid upon the orifice of the chalice to protect its contents from flies or dust.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 3: Brownson-Clairvaux 1840-1916 1913

  • [507] The pall is a sort of collar, made of lamb's wool, which every metropolitan is required to obtain from the Pope, and without which he cannot exercise his functions.

    St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh of Clairvaux Bernard 1899

Comments

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  • All stubble is being burned, a chiffon pall

    is settling over round flesh-tiny hills, it seems haunches

    of supine bodies unbreathing after a fall.

    - Peter Reading, Burning Stubble, from For the Municipality's Elderly, 1974

    June 22, 2008

  • "An altar cloth is used by various religious groups to cover an altar." --Wikipedia

    February 10, 2009

  • "Often far away there I thought of these two, guarding the door of darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall..." --Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

    March 5, 2011