mantle

plural mantles

1. A piece of clothing somewhat like an open robe or cloak, especially that worn by Orthodox bishops.First known use 9th c.

   The people of the village all said, "It could be none but the good-natured Dwarfs, who come by night tripping along with their feet covered with long mantles, as light as birds, and industriously perform for mankind their daily work."

   1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume II, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 95

2. figurativelyA figurative garment representing authority or status, capable of affording protection.

   At the meeting, she finally assumed the mantle of leadership of the party.

   2 more examples

   The movement strove to put women under the protective mantle of civil rights laws.

   “The great millennial novelist”—the mantle has been thrust, by Boomers and Gen Xers alike, upon the Irish writer Sally Rooney, whose two carefully observed and gentle comedies of manners both appeared before her twenty-eighth birthday. With this mantle have come prizes and money. Nearly every review has mentioned at least the prizes.

   2019 April 18, Madeleine Schwartz, “How Should a Millennial Be?”, in The New York Review, →ISSN

3. figurativelyAnything that covers or conceals something else; a cloak.First known use 9th c.

   the green mantle of the standing pool

   c. 1605-1606, William Shakespeare, King Lear

   2 more examples

   But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.

   c. 1599-1602, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, act 1, scene 1; republished as Hamlet, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1992, →ISBN, page 6

   Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars

   1932 December, Robert E. Howard, “The Phoenix on the Sword”, in Weird Tales

4. biologyThe body wall of a mollusc, from which the shell is secreted.First known use 15th c.

   Molluscan bodies are broadly divided into two parts: a muscular foot and a shell-secreting mantle.

   2017, Danna Staaf, Squid Empire, ForeEdge, →ISBN, page 8

   1 more example

   He grasps the female from slightly below about the mid-mantle region and positions himself so his arms are close to the opening of her mantle.

   1990, Daniel L. Gilbert, William J. Adelman, John M. Arnold (editors), Squid as Experimental Animals, page 71

5. biologyThe back of a bird together with the folded wings.
6. The zone of hot gases around a flame.
7. 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.)First known use 19th c.
8. The outer wall and casing of a blast furnace, above the hearth.
9. A penstock for a water wheel.
10. anatomyThe cerebral cortex.First known use 19th c.
11. geographyThe layer between Earth's core and crust.First known use 20th c.

    The crust (a mere 1% of the Earth's volume) is made of lighter melt products from the mantle.

    2012, Chinle Miller, In Mesozoic Lands: The Mesozoic Geology of Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Kindle edition

12. Any similar layer in an exoplanet.First known use 20th c.
13. alternativeAlternative spelling of mantel (“shelf above fireplace”).
14. governmentA mantling.

present singular third person mantles · participle present mantling · participle past mantled · past mantled

1. transitiveTo cover or conceal (something); to cloak; to disguise.

   All beneath the pinkish sky from the wildfires / Which mantle the horizon line

   2019, Vansire, “Metamodernity”, in Metamodernity

   2 more examples

   As the morning steals upon the night, Melting the darkness; so their rising senses Begin to chace the ign'rant fumes, that mantle Their clearer reason.

   1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]

   I left them I' th' filthy mantled pool beyond your cell, There dancing up to th' chins.

   1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]

2. intransitiveTo become covered or concealed.
3. intransitiveTo spread like a mantle (especially of blood in the face and cheeks when a person flushes).

   The blood still mantled below her ears; she bent her head in shame of her humility.

   1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “chapter 10”, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC

   3 more examples

   […]—that the richest people in the world have the hardest hearts in it, and refuse to help their fellow-creatures, save through the medium of ostentation, and in return for value received?—that the highest and oldest nobility in Europe—the purest blood which ever mantled in the lovely cheek of virgin woman—is regularly exhibited in large bodies, under the protection of British matrons, policemen, and constables, at half-a-crown a head?

   1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XXXVII, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 171

   […] and then that coffee! what fragrance it diffused through the room — how the foaming hot cream mantled over it, making discovered country from whose bourne no Master Philip's teeth water, […]

   1847, The Mirror Monthly Magazine, page 259

   “Yes,” he answered, with bowed head, his face mantling with the flush of shame.

   1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 183

4. To climb over or onto something.
5. falconryThe action of stretching out the wings to hide food.
6. falconryThe action of stretching a wing and the same side leg out to one side of the body.

1. A surname.