mantle

Etymology

From Middle English mantel, from Old English mæntel, mentel (“sleeveless cloak”), from Proto-West Germanic *mantil; later reinforced by Anglo-Norman mantel, both from Latin mantēllum (“covering, cloak”), diminutive of mantum (French manteau, Spanish manto), probably from Gaulish *mantos, *mantalos (“trodden road”), from Proto-Celtic *mantos, *mantlos, from Proto-Indo-European *menH- (“tread, press together; crumble”). Compare Icelandic möttull.

noun

1. A piece of clothing somewhat like an open robe or cloak, especially that worn by Orthodox bishops.
   Coordinate term: (mantle worn by the pope) mantum
2. (figurative) A figurative garment representing authority or status, capable of affording protection.
   At the meeting, she finally assumed the mantle of leadership of the party.
   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. 2019-04-18, Madeleine Schwartz, “How Should a Millennial Be?”, in The New York Review, →ISSN
3. (figurative) Anything that covers or conceals something else; a cloak.
   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, page 6
   the green mantle of the standing pool c. 1605-1606, William Shakespeare, King Lear
   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. (malacology) The body wall of a mollusc, from which the shell is secreted.
   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
   Molluscan bodies are broadly divided into two parts: a muscular foot and a shell-secreting mantle. 2017, Danna Staaf, Squid Empire, ForeEdge, page 8
5. (ornithology) The 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.)
8. The outer wall and casing of a blast furnace, above the hearth.
9. A penstock for a water wheel.
10. (anatomy) The cerebral cortex.
11. (geology) The layer between the Earth's core and crust.
    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. A fireplace shelf; Alternative spelling of mantel
13. (heraldry) A mantling.

verb

1. (transitive) To cover or conceal (something); to cloak; to disguise.
   All beneath the pinkish sky from the wildfires / Which mantle the horizon line 2019, Vansire (lyrics and music), “Metamodernity”, in Metamodernity
2. (intransitive) To become covered or concealed.
3. (intransitive) To spread like a mantle (especially of blood in the face and cheeks when a person flushes).
   […] 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
4. To climb over or onto something.
5. (falconry) The action of stretching out the wings to hide food.
6. (falconry) The action of stretching a wing and the same side leg out to one side of the body.