curtain

plural curtains

1. householdbusinessA piece of cloth covering a window, bed, etc. to offer privacy and keep out light.

   He drew the curtains at 11:00pm before falling asleep.

   2 more examples

   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.

   1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 0016

   It is realised that the old Pullman standard sleeper, with its convertible "sections", each containing upper and lower berths, and with no greater privacy at night than the curtains drawn along both sides of a middle aisle, has had its day.

   1944 November and December, “"Duplex Roomette" Sleeping Cars”, in Railway Magazine, page 324

2. businessA similar piece of cloth that separates the audience and the stage in a theater.

   1 more example

   “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.[…]”

   1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Lisson Grove Mystery”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition, London: Greening & Co., 1909, OCLC 11192831, quoted in The Case of Miss Elliott (ebook no. 2000141h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg of Australia, February 2020

3. broadlyentertainmentThe 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. fortificationsThe flat area of wall which connects two bastions or towers; the main area of a fortified wall.

   Captain Rense, beleagring the Citie of Errona for us, […] caused a forcible mine to be wrought under a great curtine of the walles […].

   , Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, p.220

5. euphemisticin pluralsometimesDeath, final curtain.

   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

6. architectureThat part of a wall of a building which is between two pavilions, towers, etc.
7. derogatoryobsoleteA flag; an ensign.

   Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose

   1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]

8. The uninterrupted stream of fluid that falls onto a moving substrate in the process of curtain coating.
9. A haircut combining a long fringe on either side of a center part or sometimes off-center, with the sides and the back kept short.

   Synonyms: curtains

present singular third person curtains · participle present curtaining · participle past curtained · past curtained

1. transitiveTo cover (a window) with a curtain; to hang curtains.

   The window, softly curtained with dotted swiss, became the focus of my desperate hour-by-hour attention.

   1985, Carol Shields, “Dolls, Dolls, Dolls, Dolls”, in The Collected Stories, Random House Canada, published 2004, page 163

   1 more example

   In a large bedroom upstairs, the window of which was thickly curtained with a great woollen shawl lately discarded by the landlady, Mrs. Rolliver, were gathered on this evening nearly a dozen persons, all seeking vinous bliss; all old inhabitants of the nearer end of Marlott, and frequenters of this retreat.

   1891, Thomas Hardy, chapter IV, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume I, London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC, phase the first (The Maiden), pages 40–41

2. figurativelytransitiveTo hide, cover or separate as if by a curtain.

   But bleakness still curtained the gray horizon.

   Hillel Halkin

   2003 [2001], A. B. Yehoshua [Hillel Halkin], The Liberated Bride, Harcourt, Part 2, Chapter 17, page 115

   3 more examples

   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;

   1593, William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, act II, scene 2

   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.

   1840, Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry

   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.

   Horace Gregory

   1958, Ovid [Horace Gregory], The Metamorphoses, New York: Viking, Book IV, Perseus, page 115