curtain
pronunciation
How to pronounce curtain in British English:
UK [ˈkɜːtn]
How to pronounce curtain in American English:
US [ˈkɜːrtn]
-
- Noun:
- hanging cloth used as a blind (especially for a window)
- any barrier to communication or vision
-
- Verb:
- provide with drapery
Word Origin
- curtain
- curtain: [13] Latin cortīna meant ‘round vessel, cauldron’, but in the 4th-century Vulgate we find it being used to translate Greek aulaía ‘curtain’. The reason for this considerable semantic leap seems to have been a link perceived to exist between Greek aulaía, a derivative of aulē ‘court’, and Latin cohort- ‘court’ (source of English court), although in fact there is no etymological connection between cohort- and cortīna. The word passed into Old French as cortine, and from there was acquired by English.
- curtain (n.)
- c. 1300, from Old French cortine "curtain, tapestry, drape, blanket," from Late Latin cortina "curtain," but in classical Latin "round vessel, cauldron," from Latin cortem (older cohortem) "enclosure, courtyard" (see cohort). The confusion apparently begins in using cortina as a loan-translation for Greek aulaia ("curtain") in the Vulgate (to render Hebrew yeriah in Exodus xxvi:1, etc.) because the Greek word was connected to aule "court," perhaps because the "door" of a Greek house that led out to the courtyard was a hung cloth. The figurative sense in curtain call is from 1884. Curtains "the end" is 1912, originally from stage plays. An Old English word for "curtain" was fleonet "fly-net."
Example
- 1. When anthony perkins starts slashing at the curtain , I think my entire body was frozen in petrification .
- 2. We recently found this octopus shower curtain by thomas paul .
- 3. Not even a curtain separated the beds .
- 4. The curtain will rise thursday , when the european central bank 's board meets .
- 5. Dr marka has created a curtain of invisible light that mosquitoes cannot penetrate .