curtain | Definition of curtain in English with examples plus define 22 related words - infoAnew" /> curtain" /> curtain" /> curtain definition" /> curtain in a sentence" />

🤩 Discover new information from across the web

curtain

Overview

This page has 9 definitions of curtain in English. Curtain is a noun and verb. Examples of how to use curtain in a sentence are shown. Also define these 22 related words and terms: cloth, cover, window, bed, privacy, light, audience, stage, theater, wall, bastions, towers, final curtain, death, architecture, pavilion, tower, derogatory, flag, ensign, hide, and separate.

English

Girl surrounded by curtains

Etymology

From Middle English curteyn, corteyn, cortyn, cortine, from Old French cortine, from Medieval Latin cōrtīna (“curtain”), from Latin cohors (“court, enclosure”).

Pronunciation

Noun

curtain (plural curtains)

  1. A piece of cloth covering a window, bed, etc. to offer privacy and keep out light.
    • 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, OCLC 7780546; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], OCLC 2666860, page 0016:
      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.
    • Window definition
      An opening, usually covered by one or more panes of clear glass, to allow light and air from outside to enter a building or vehicle. (1 of 11 window definitions)
  2. 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. […]”
  3. (theater, by extension) The beginning of a show; the moment the curtain rises.
    He took so long to shave his head that we arrived 45 minutes after curtain and were denied late entry.
  4. (fortifications) The flat area of wall which connects two bastions or towers; the main area of a fortified wall.
  5. (euphemistic, also "final curtain", sometimes in the plural) Death.
  6. (architecture) That part of a wall of a building which is between two pavilions, towers, etc.
  7. (obsolete, derogatory) A flag; an ensign.

Derived terms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Dictionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Verb

curtain (third-person singular simple present curtains, present participle curtaining, simple past and past participle curtained)

  1. To cover (a window) with a curtain; to hang curtains.
  2. (figuratively) To hide, cover or separate as if by a curtain.
    • 1593, William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus‎[2], Act II, Scene 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 [Horace Gregory], The Metamorphoses, New York: Viking, Book IV, Perseus:
      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 [2001], A. B. Yehoshua [Hillel Halkin], The Liberated Bride, Harcourt, Part 2, Chapter 17:
      But bleakness still curtained the gray horizon.

Synonyms

Translations

See also

Anagrams

Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=curtain&oldid=68529633"