winding-sheet

plural winding-sheets

1. datedDated form of winding sheet.

   The painter had set himself, with, I doubt not, fair moral intent, to exhibit a skeleton wrapped up in a winding-sheet; […]

   1858, Hugh Miller, “Rambles of a Geologist; or Ten Thousand Miles over the Fossiliferous Deposits of Scotland”, in The Cruise of the Betsey; […]. With Rambles of a Geologist; […]., Edinburgh: Thomas Constable and Co.; London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., chapter X, page 399

   5 more examples

   Accordingly, mysterious shapes were made of tables and chairs, heaped together in the middle of rooms, and covered over with great winding-sheets.

   1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, “In which Mr. Dombey, as a Man and a Father, is seen at the head of the Home-Department”, in Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 16

   It is so woven into the very warp and woof of our nature, that till we are wrapped in our winding-sheets we shall never hear the last of it.

   1857, C[harles] H[addon] Spurgeon, Sermons of the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, of London, New York, N.Y.: Robert Carter & Brothers, page 356

   He resorted to his pint of wine for consolation, drank it all in a few minutes, and fell asleep on his arms, with his hair straggling over the table, and a long winding-sheet in the candle dripping down upon him.

   1859, Charles Dickens, “Congratulatory”, in A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, book II (The Golden Thread), page 55

   Thinglets fit only to wrap candles in, or make winding-sheets in Lent for pilchards, or keep butter in the market-place from melting.

   1890, Catherine [Edith Macauley] Martin, edited by Rosemary Campbell, An Australian Girl, University of Queensland Press, published 2002, →ISBN, volume I, chapter IV, page 52

   The dead have come to take the living. The dead in winding-sheets, the regimented dead on horseback, the skeleton that plays a hurdy-gurdy.

   1992 October, Don DeLillo, “Pafko at the Wall”, in Harper’s Magazine, volume 285, number 1709, pages 35–67