different between curtain vs disguise

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?k??tn?/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?k?tn?/, [?k??n?]
• Rhymes: -??(r)t?n
• Homophone: Kirton

Noun

curtain (plural curtains)

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

   • 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.

2. A similar piece of cloth that separates the audience and the stage in a theater.
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.
   • , 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 […].

5. (euphemistic, also "final curtain", sometimes in the plural) 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.

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

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.
   • 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.

2. (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.

Synonyms

• becurtain

Translations

See also

• blind
• drape
• curtain on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• turacin

English

Etymology

From Middle English disgisen, disguisen, borrowed from Old French desguiser (modern French déguiser), itself derived from des- (“dis-”) (from Latin dis-) + guise (“guise”) (from a Germanic source).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /d?s??a?z/, /d?z??a?z/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /d?s??a?z/, /d??ska?z/
• Hyphenation: dis?guise
• Rhymes: -a?z

Noun

disguise (countable and uncountable, plural disguises)

1. Material (such as clothing, makeup, a wig) used to alter one’s visual appearance in order to hide one's identity or assume another.

   A cape and moustache completed his disguise.

2. (figuratively) The appearance of something on the outside which masks what's beneath.
3. The act of disguising, notably as a ploy.

   Any disguise may expose soldiers to be deemed enemy spies.

4. (archaic) A change of behaviour resulting from intoxication.

Synonyms

• camouflage
• guise
• mask
• pretense

Translations

Verb

disguise (third-person singular simple present disguises, present participle disguising, simple past and past participle disguised)

1. (transitive) To change the appearance of (a person or thing) so as to hide, or to assume an identity.

   Spies often disguise themselves.
2. (transitive) To avoid giving away or revealing (something secret); to hide by a false appearance.

   He disguised his true intentions.

3. (archaic) To affect or change by liquor; to intoxicate.

   • I have just left the right worshipful, and his myrmidons, about a sneaker or five gallons; the whole magistracy was pretty well disguised before I gave them the slip.

Synonyms

• camouflage
• cloak
• mask
• hide

Derived terms

• disguisedly
• disguisement
• disguiser

Translations