Definition of "pall" []

• A cover for a coffin, bier, or tomb, often made of black, purple, or white velvet. (noun)
• A coffin, especially one being carried to a grave or tomb. (noun)
• A covering that darkens or obscures: a pall of smoke over the city. (noun)
• A gloomy effect or atmosphere: "A pall of depressed indifference hung over Petrograd during February and March 1916” ( W. Bruce Lincoln). (noun)
• Ecclesiastical A linen cloth or a square of cardboard faced with cloth used to cover the chalice. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "But to me one of the most troubling aspects of the current administration's pall is the attempt by its followers to supress any kind of dissent, especially if it is laced with humor."
• "It was almost impossible to people, in fancy, the tattered and neglected churchyard of Beaconsfield as it now is -- with those who swelled the funeral pomp of the greatest ornament of the British senate; to imagine the titled pall-bearers, where the swine were tumbling over graves, and rooting at headstones."
• "The government, meanwhile, was to auction 15 billion pounds $2.5 billion in Treasury bills on Monday, a step that economists expected would draw in mostly domestic banks after the protests of the past couple of weeks appeared likely to cast an at least short-term pall on the investment climate in the country."