cerement

English edit

From French cirement (“waxing, wax dressing”), from cirer (“to wax, wrap”).

cerement (plural cerements)

c. 1600, Shakespeare, Hamlet
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, have burst their cerements.
1834, Lydia Sigourney, Poems, Barzillai the Gileadite, page 26:
Oh! when his sacred dust
The cerements of the tomb shall burst,
Might I be worthy at his feet to rise,
To yonder blissful skies,
Where angel-hosts resplendent shine,
Jehovah!—Lord of Hosts, the glory shall be thine.
1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, hardback edition, page 77
"Who is the woman in the cerements?", she inconsequently wondered.
1921, Sir James George Frazer, Apollodorus: The Library (Loeb Classical Library), volume I, Introduction, § 1: “The Author and His Book”, page xxvii:
The cerements still cling to their wasted frames, but will soon be exchanged for a gayer garb in their passage from the tomb to the temple.
1971, Anthony Burgess, M/F, Penguin, published 2004, page 62:
Her red robe billowed, all in wood, except where the great phallic spike of her martyrdom had called forth blood to tack the cerement to her body.

burial shroud or garment

cerecloth — see cerecloth