Encloud

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Surrounding something completely with a cloud or cloudlike mass so that it is hidden from view
2. Wrapping or shrouding a person or object in cloud, obscuring it from sight
3. Covering or enveloping a thing in a dense mist or vapor that conceals its outline

Etymology: "Encloud" is a plain formation: the prefix "en-", which turns a noun into a verb meaning "put into" or "cover with" the thing named, attached to "cloud." Put together, the verb means to wrap something in cloud, or in this case mist, so the word describes a state of being shrouded rather than a physical object forming in the sky. The noun "cloud" itself goes back to Old English "clud," meaning a mass of rock or a hill, and only gradually came to mean the vapor-filled mass in the air. That older sense of a solid lump survives in the English sense of a "clod," which shares the root. The "en-" prefix, borrowed from Old French and ultimately from Latin "in," has been used for centuries to make verbs like "enrich" and "enclose," so "encloud" follows a productive pattern rather than an unusual one.