Definition of: mantle

(man′təl) noun
1. A loose garment, usually without sleeves, worn over the other garments; a cloak.
2. Anything that clothes or envelops; hence, whatever covers or conceals; a mantle of darkness.
3. Zool. a The variously modified flap or folds of the membranous covering of a mollusk. It secretes the shell. b The back, scapulars, and folded wings of a bird, when distinguished by color, as in gulls. c The soft external body-wall in the tunic of ascidians.
4. The outer covering of a wall.
5. The outer masonry of a blast furnace.
6. A sheath of clay laid over a wax model, forming a mold when the wax is melted out.
7. A mantel.
8. A hood of network fabric, generally cylindrical, of the salts of certain rare refractory earths with high radiating power, as cerium oxide, intended to give light by incandescence, as in the flame of a Bunsen burner, or in the Welsbach burner.
—v. ·tled, ·tling v.t.
1. To cover with or as with a mantle; conceal.
—v.i.
2. To overspread or cover the surface of something.
3. To be or become covered, overspread, or suffused.
4. To spread out one wing at a time over the corresponding outstretched leg: said of hawks. ♦ Homophone: mantel. [Fusion of OE mentel and OF mantel, both <L mantellum, mantelum a cloak, cloth, towel]