Noun

(en noun)

The overside or up-side of a flat object such as a table, or of a liquid.

*{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=Foreword citation , passage=A very neat old woman, still in her good outdoor coat and best beehive hat, was sitting at a polished mahogany table on whose surface there were several scored scratches so deep that a triangular piece of the veneer had come cleanly away,

The outside hull of a tangible object.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-05-11, volume=407, issue=8835, page=80, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= The climate of Tibet: Pole-land , passage=Of all the transitions brought about on the Earth’s surface by temperature change, the melting of ice into water is the starkest. It is binary. And for the land beneath, the air above and the life around, it changes everything.}}

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Welcome to the plastisphere , passage=[The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across.}}

(lb) Outward or external appearance.

:

*(Vicesimus Knox) (1752-1821)

*:Vain and weak understandings, which penetrate no deeper than the surface .

*

*:“A tight little craft,” was Austin’s invariable comment on the matron; and she looked it, always trim and trig and smooth of surface like a converted yacht cleared for action. ¶ Near her wandered her husband, orientally bland, invariably affable,.

The locus of an equation (especially one with exactly two degrees of freedom) in a more-than-two-dimensional space.

(lb) That part of the side which is terminated by the flank prolonged, and the angle of the nearest bastion.

:(Stocqueler)

Noun

(en noun)

A piece of clothing somewhat like an open robe or cloak, especially that worn by Orthodox bishops.

(figuratively) A figurative garment representing authority or status, capable of affording protection.

At the meeting, she finally assumed the mantle of leadership of the party.

The movement strove to put women under the protective mantle of civil rights laws.

(figuratively) Anything that covers or conceals something else; a cloak.

* (rfdate) (Shakespeare) (King Lear)

the green mantle of the standing pool

(zoology) The body wall of a mollusc, from which the shell is secreted.

* 1990 , Daniel L. Gilbert, William J. Adelman, John M. Arnold (editors), Squid as Experimental Animals , page 71 (where there is an illustration):

Before copulation in Loligo'', the male swims beside and slightly below about his potential mate and flashes his chromatophores. He grasps the female from slightly below about the mid-mantle region and positions himself so his arms are close to the opening of her mantle'''. He then reaches into his ' mantle with his hectocotylus and picks up several spermatophores from his penis.

(zoology) The back of a bird together with the folded wings.

The zone of hot gases around a flame; the gauzy incandescent covering of a gas lamp.

The outer wall and casing of a blast furnace, above the hearth.

(Raymond)

A penstock for a water wheel.

(anatomy) The cerebral cortex.

(geology) The layer between the Earth's core and crust.

A fireplace shelf;

(heraldry) A mantling.