means A cloth used to wrap a body for burial, or more broadly anything that covers, conceals, or obscures.

from From Old English 'scrud,' meaning a garment or clothing — the same root that dressed the living before it dressed the dead. It's related to the verb 'shred' and to a Germanic root meaning 'to cut,' since cloth had to be cut to clothe. For centuries 'shroud' simply meant 'clothing' or 'shelter'; only later did it narrow to the cloth that clothes a corpse, then widen again into the figurative — the shroud of fog, of secrecy, of mystery — anything that wraps a thing away from sight.