different between curtain vs proscenium

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

Alternative forms

• proscænium

Etymology

From Latin proscaenium (“in front of the scenery”), from Ancient Greek ?????????? (prosk?nion), from ??? (pró, “before”) + ????? (sk?n?, “scene building”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /p????si?.ni.?m/
• (US) IPA^(key): /p?o??si?.ni.?m/

Noun

proscenium (plural prosceniums or proscenia)

1. (in a modern theater) The stage area between the curtain and the orchestra.
2. (in an ancient theater) The stage area immediately in front of the scene building.
3. (in an ancient theater) The row of columns at the front the scene building, at first directly behind the circular orchestra but later upon a stage.
   • 1936, Roy C. Flickinger, The Greek Theater and Its Drama, 4th edition, page 58

     The front of the scene-building and of the parascenia came to be decorated with a row of columns, the proscenium (???, "before"+?????).

4. A proscenium arch.

Coordinate terms

Translations

Danish

Noun

proscenium n (singular definite prosceniet, plural indefinite proscenier)

1. proscenium

Inflection

Latin

Alternative forms

• proscaenium

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ?????????? (prosk?nion), from ??? (pró, “before”) + ????? (sk?n?, “scene building”).

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /pros?ke?.ni.um/, [p??s??ke?ni???]
• (Vulgar) IPA^(key): /pros?ke?.ni.u/, [pros?ke?n?u]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /pro??e.ni.um/, [p??????nium]

Noun

prosc?nium n (genitive prosc?ni? or prosc?n?); second declension

1. proscenium

Declension

Second-declension noun (neuter), with locative.

¹Found in older Latin (until the Augustan Age).

Descendants

• ? English: proscenium
• French: proscénium
• Italian: proscenio

References

• proscenium in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• proscenium in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré Latin-Français, Hachette