pallium

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A cloak or mantle worn by the ancient Greeks and Romans.
2. n. Ecclesiastical A vestment worn by the pope and conferred by him on archbishops and sometimes on bishops. Also called pall¹.
3. n. The mantle of gray matter forming the cerebral cortex.
4. n. The mantle of a mollusk, brachiopod, or bird.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In Roman antiquity, a voluminous rectangular mantle for men, corresponding to the Greek himation (see himation), and considered at Rome, because worn by Greek savants, as the particular dress of philosophers; also, a toga or other outer garment; a curtain, etc., of rectangular shape.
2. n. Eccles.: In the early church, a large mantle worn by Christian philosophers, ascetics, and monks.
3. n. A vestment worn by certain bishops, especially patriarchs and metropolitans. It seems to have come first into use in the Eastern Church, where it is known as the omophorion, and to have been worn by patriarchs, and given by them to metropolitans. Some authorities think that it was of primitive origin and at first worn by all bishops, while others hold that it was originally an imperial garment, bestowed by the emperor as a mark of distinction upon patriarchs and others, and afterward given to metropolitans and bishops generally. It has always been of wool, as indicating the pastoral office. It seems at first to have been a mantle rolled together and passed round the neck so as to fall both in front and at the back. It then became contracted in width and was worn nearly as it still is in the Greek Church, as a wide woolen band fastened round the shoulders and descending nearly to the feet. In the Latin or Roman Catholic Church it gradually assumed a different shape, and is now a narrow band like a ring, passing round the shoulders, with two short vertical pieces, falling respectively down the breast and the back. It is ornamented with crosses, and has three golden pins by which it is attached with loops to the chasuble. The pallium was worn anciently in the Western Church by the Pope and by Gallican metropolitans. From the sixth century it began to be given by the Pope to some metropolitans outside of his own diocese, in sign of special favor or distinction—at first, according to some authorities, only with approval of the emperor. By the seventh or eighth century it came to be regarded as a sign of acknowledgment of papal supremacy. At present, in the Roman Catholic Church, a bishop elected or translated to a see of metropolitical or higher rank must beg the Pope for the pallium, and receives it after taking an oath of allegiance to the Pope. The Pope wears it whenever he officiates, bishops only on certain great feasts. Anglican archbishops no longer wear the pallium since the Reformation, but it forms part of the heraldic insignia of the archbishops of Canterbury, Armagh, and Dublin. Also called pall.
4. n. An alter-cloth; a frontal or pall.
5. n. In conchology, the mantle, mantle-flap, or mantle-skirt of a mollusk, an outgrowth of the dorsal body-wall. It is a specialized, more or less highly and very variously developed integument, including epithelial, vascular, glandular, and muscular structures, and forming folds or processes which represent the foot and other parts. It is often wanting. See cuts under Lamellibranchiata, Pulmonata, and Tridacnidæ.
6. n. In ornithology, the mantle; the stragulum; the back and folded wings together, in any way distinguished, as by color in a gull, etc.
7. n. 5. A cirro-stratus cloud when it forms a uniform sheet over the whole sky.
8. n. The cerebral cortex, or that portion of it which forms the roof and sides of the lateral ventricles: this is termed the pallium, or brain mantle, as distinguished from the stem of the brain on which it rests.

Wiktionary

1. n. A woollen vestment conferred on archbishops by the Pope.
2. n. historical A large cloak worn by Greek philosophers and teachers.
3. n. zoology The mantle of a mollusc.
4. n. meteorology A sheet of cloud covering the whole sky, especially nimbostratus.
5. n. anatomy The cerebral cortex.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Anc. Costume) A large, square, woolen cloak which enveloped the whole person, worn by the Greeks and by certain Romans. It is the Roman name of a Greek garment.
2. n. (R. C. Ch.) A band of white wool, worn on the shoulders, with four purple crosses worked on it; a pall.
3. n. The mantle of a bivalve. See Mantle.
4. n. The mantle of a bird.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. cloak or mantle worn by men in ancient Rome
2. n. (Roman Catholic Church) vestment consisting of a band encircling the shoulders with two lappets hanging in front and back
3. n. (zoology) a protective layer of epidermis in mollusks or brachiopods that secretes a substance forming the shell
4. n. the layer of unmyelinated neurons (the grey matter) forming the cortex of the cerebrum