different between curtain vs shroud

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??a?d/
• Rhymes: -a?d

Etymology 1

From Middle English shroud, from Old English s?r?d, from Proto-Germanic *skr?d?. Cognate with Old Norse skrúð (“the shrouds of a ship”) ( > Danish, Norwegian skrud (“splendid attire”)).

Noun

shroud (plural shrouds)

1. That which clothes, covers, conceals, or protects; a garment.
   • 1636, George Sandys, Paraphrase upon the Psalms and Hymns dispersed throughout the Old and New Testaments

     swaddled, as new born, in sable shrouds
2. Especially, the dress for the dead; a winding sheet.
   • 1826, Mary Shelley, The Last Man, volume 3, chapter 2

     Yet let us go? England is in her shroud – we may not enchain ourselves to a corpse.
3. That which covers or shelters like a shroud.
4. A covered place used as a retreat or shelter, as a cave or den; also, a vault or crypt.
   • 1618, George Chapman, Homeric Hymns

     The shroud to which he won / His fair-eyed oxen.

   • 1554, John Withals, A Dictionarie in English and Latine

     a vault, or shroud, as under a church

5. (nautical) One of a set of ropes or cables (rigging) attaching a mast to the sides of a vessel or to another anchor point, serving to support the mast sideways; such rigging collectively.
6. One of the two annular plates at the periphery of a water wheel, which form the sides of the buckets; a shroud plate.

Synonyms

• sindon

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English schrouden (> Anglo-Latin scrud?re), from Middle English schroud (“shroud”) (see above).

Verb

shroud (third-person singular simple present shrouds, present participle shrouding, simple past and past participle shrouded)

1. To cover with a shroud.
2. To conceal or hide from view, as if by a shroud.

   • One of these trees, with all his young ones, may shroud four hundred horsemen.

   • 1665, John Dryden, The Indian Emperour

     Some tempest rise, / And blow out all the stars that light the skies, / To shroud my shame.

3. To take shelter or harbour.

Translations

Etymology 3

Variant of shred.

Noun

shroud (plural shrouds)

1. The branching top of a tree; foliage.

Verb

shroud (third-person singular simple present shrouds, present participle shrouding, simple past and past participle shrouded)

1. (transitive, Britain, dialect) To lop the branches from (a tree).

   Synonym: shrood

References

• Shroud (sailing) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• shroud in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• shroud at OneLook Dictionary Search

Middle English

Alternative forms

• shroude, shroute, sheroude, shrude, shrute
• scrude, sroude, srout, srud, sruð, ssroud (early)

Etymology

From Old English s?r?d.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?ru?d/

Noun

shroud (plural shroudes)

1. garment, priestly vestment

Descendants

• English: shroud
• Yola: shrude

References

• “shr?ud, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.