Venetian blind

plural Venetian blinds · alternative venetian blind

1. A blind consisting of overlapping horizontal, flat slats, usually made of metal, vinyl or wood, that can be tilted so as to let in more or less light.

   The rest of the apartment was filled with that soft green light where the noon is excluded by Venetian blinds, or the still softer shadow of creeping plants:...

   1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter VIII, in Romance and Reality. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 115

   2 more examples

   A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable windows with Venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting between the stones, imposing carriage archways right and left, immense double doors standing ponderously ajar.

   1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 199

   Every traveller on the demonstration runs was soon entranced with the most noticeable - the individual electric motors to raise, lower and adjust the venetian blinds in each double-glazed window, which are under the passenger's control in each seating bay by means of little thumb switches below the frames; […]

   1961 August, G. Freeman Allen, “Switzerland's new four-voltage "Trans-Europe Express" units”, in Trains Illustrated, page 489

   Synonyms: Venetian, venetian, jill-mill