cerement

plural cerements

1. oftenpluralA burial shroud or garment.

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

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

   3 more examples

   […]; 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?

   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

   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.

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

   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.

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

2. specificallyCerecloth.