From Hindi शाल (śāl) and Urdu شال (śāl), from Persian شال (šâl).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ʃɔːl/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ʃɔl/
  • (cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /ʃɑl/
• (Canada) IPA^(key): [ʃɒːɫ]

• Audio (US, cot–caught merger):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔːl

shawl (plural shawls)

1. A square or rectangular piece of cloth worn as a covering for the head, neck, and shoulders, typically by women. [from 1662]

   She wears her shawl when it's cold outside.

   • 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides.[…], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Henry Colburn,[…], →OCLC, page 60:

     Just then Norbourne entered the chamber; and, fancying from her attitude that his wife was asleep, he approached softly, and drew a large shawl around her.

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter V, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     Then came a maid with hand-bag and shawls, and after her a tall young lady. She stood for a moment holding her skirt above the grimy steps,[…], and the light of the reflector fell full upon her.

   • 1958 October, “Liverpool to London in 1842”, in Railway Magazine, page 682:

     "In the coach in which I rode, there was a vacant seat till our arrival in Birmingham. Leaving Birmingham I found it filled with a fat Englishman, in drab breeches and gaiter boots, the finest specimen of a thorough John Bull that I had seen—weight about sixteen stone. He wore two top coats, a broad brimmed hat, and an enormous red travelling shawl, behind the folds of which his portly double chin was entirely hidden.

   • 1967, Barbara Sleigh, Jessamy, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, published 1993, →ISBN, page 26:

     Jessamy turned. Her uplifted candle showed a dark handsome young women in a black dress. She wore a wide shawl over her head which hung down on either side, only partially hiding a starched, white apron..

2. A fold of wrinkled flesh under the lips and neck of a bloodhound, used in scenting.

• → German: Schal
• → Irish: seál

shawl (third-person singular simple present shawls, present participle shawling, simple past and past participle shawled)

1. (transitive) To wrap in a shawl.
   • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair[…], London: Bradbury and Evans[…], published 1848, →OCLC:

     Rebecca was shawling her in an upper apartment , where these two friends had an opportunity for a little of that secret talking and conspiring which forms the delight of female life

• Walsh

From Middle English schalen.

• IPA^(key): /ʃɑːl/

shawl

1. to shell
   • 1867, GLOSSARY OF THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY:

     Shawl a baanès.

     Shell the beans.

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 67