A pall is a cloth over a coffin, or a gloom that settles over things. A black pall, cast a pall over, a pall of smoke.
The figurative sense is now much the commoner: news casts a pall over an occasion, and a pall of smoke or dust hangs over a place. Pallbearers carry the coffin, named from the cloth. There is also a verb to pall, meaning to become tedious — the pleasure palls — which is a separate word from appal.
1nounpallA cloth spread over a coffin.
“A black pall covered the coffin as it was carried into the church.”
2noungloomA gloom or heavy covering.
“The news of his death cast a pall over the celebrations.”
pall is a covering, or a gloom.
Old English pael comes from Latin pallium, a cloak or covering. Palliative comes from the same covering, in the sense of cloaking a symptom.
Proto-Indo-European
*pel-
Old English
pæl
Middle English
pal
English, today
pall
Built from
From Middle English pal, from Old English pæl. From Middle English pal, palle, from Old English pæl, pæll, from Old French paile and Latin pallium (“cloak; covering”) (and thus a a doublet of pallium), probably from palla (“piece of cloth worn as apparel”) (possibly from Proto-Indo-European pel- (“to cover, wrap; hide, skin; cloth”)) + -ium.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA