curtain
English
Etymology
From Middle English curteyn, corteyn, cortyn, cortine, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Old French cortine, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Medieval Latin cōrtīna (“curtain”), from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin cohors (“court, enclosure”).
Pronunciation
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Audio (UK): (file)
- Lua error in Module:parameters at line 290: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "GA" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. IPA(key): /ˈkɝtn̩/, [ˈkɝʔn̩]
Audio (US): (file)
- Rhymes: -ɜː(r)tən
- Homophone: Kirton
Noun
curtain (plural curtains)
- A piece of cloth covering a window, bed, etc. to offer privacy and keep out light.
- Template:RQ:BLwnds TLdgr
- Thus the red damask curtains which now shut out the fog-laden, drizzling atmosphere of the Marylebone Road, had cost a mere song, and yet they might have been warranted to last another thirty years. A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat forward, staring into the dull, small fire.
- Template:RQ:BLwnds TLdgr
- A similar piece of cloth that separates the audience and the stage in a theater.
- 1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, chapter 2, in The Lisson Grove Mystery[1]:
- “H'm !” he said, “so, so—it is a tragedy in a prologue and three acts. I am going down this afternoon to see the curtain fall for the third time on what […] will prove a good burlesque ; but it all began dramatically enough. It was last Saturday […] that two boys, playing in the little spinney just outside Wembley Park Station, came across three large parcels done up in American cloth. […]”
- (fortifications) The flat area of wall which connects two bastions or towers; the main area of a fortified wall.
- Template:RQ:Flr Mntgn Essays, Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, p.220:
- Captain Rense, beleagring the Citie of Errona for us, […] caused a forcible mine to be wrought under a great curtine of the walles […].
- Template:RQ:Flr Mntgn Essays, Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, p.220:
- (euphemistic, also "final curtain") Death.
- 1979, Monty Python, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
- For life is quite absurd / And death's the final word / You must always face the curtain with a bow.
- 1979, Monty Python, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
- (architecture) That part of a wall of a building which is between two pavilions, towers, etc.
- (obsolete, derogatory) A flag; an ensign.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)
Derived terms
Translations
piece of cloth covering a window
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piece of cloth in a theater
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
Verb
curtain (third-person singular simple present curtains, present participle curtaining, simple past and past participle curtained)
- To cover (a window) with a curtain; to hang curtains.
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- 1985, Carol Shields, "Dolls, Dolls, Dolls, Dolls" in The Collected Stories, Random House Canada, 2004, p. 163,
- The window, softly curtained with dotted swiss, became the focus of my desperate hour-by-hour attention.
- (figuratively) To hide, cover or separate as if by a curtain.
- c. 1593, William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act II, Scene 2, [2]
- And, after conflict such as was supposed / The wandering prince and Dido once enjoy'd, / When with a happy storm they were surprised / And curtain'd with a counsel-keeping cave, / We may, each wreathed in the other's arms, / Our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber;
- 1840, Percy Bysshe Shelley, "A Defence of Poetry" [3]
- But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those arrangements of language, and especially metrical language, which are created by that imperial faculty; whose throne is curtained within the invisible nature of man.
- 1958, Ovid, The Metamorphoses, translated by Horace Gregory, New York: Viking, Book IV, Perseus, p. 115,
- He saw a rock that pierced the shifting waters / As they stilled, now curtained by the riding / Of the waves, and leaped to safety on it.
- 2003, A. B. Yehoshua, The Liberated Bride (2001), translated by Hillel Halkin, Harcourt, Part 2, Chapter 17, p. 115,
- But bleakness still curtained the gray horizon.
- c. 1593, William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act II, Scene 2, [2]
Synonyms
Translations
to cover with a curtain
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See also
Anagrams
Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms derived from Medieval Latin
- English terms derived from Latin
- English 2-syllable words
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- Rhymes:English/ɜː(r)tən
- English terms with homophones
- English lemmas
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- en:Architecture
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