different between screen vs curtain

English

Etymology

From Middle English scren, screne (“windscreen, firescreen”), from Anglo-Norman escren (“firescreen, the tester of a bed”), Old French escren, escrein, escran (modern French écran (“screen”)), from Middle Dutch scherm, from Old Dutch *skirm, from Proto-West Germanic *skirmi, from Proto-Germanic *skirmiz (“fur, shelter, covering, screen”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut, divide”). Cognate with Dutch scherm (“screen”), German Schirm (“screen”). Doublet of scherm.

An alternative etymology derives Old French escren from Old Dutch *skrank (“barrier”) (compare German Schrank (“cupboard”), Schranke (“fence”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: skr?n, IPA^(key): /sk?i?n/
• Rhymes: -i?n

Noun

screen (plural screens)

1. A physical divider intended to block an area from view, or provide shelter from something dangerous.
2. A material woven from fine wires intended to block animals or large particles from passing while allowing gasses, liquids and finer particles to pass.
   1. (mining, quarrying) A frame supporting a mesh of bars or wires used to classify fragments of stone by size, allowing the passage of fragments whose a diameter is smaller than the distance between the bars or wires.
   2. (baseball) The protective netting which protects the audience from flying objects

   3. (printing) A stencil upon a framed mesh through which paint is forced onto printed-on material; the frame with the mesh itself.
3. (by analogy) Searching through a sample for a target; an act of screening
   1. (genetics) A technique used to identify genes so as to study gene functions.
4. Various forms or formats of information display
   1. The viewing surface or area of a movie, or moving picture or slide presentation.
   2. The informational viewing area of electronic devices, where output is displayed.
      • 1977, Sex Pistols, Spunk, “Problems” (song):

   3. One of the individual regions of a video game, etc. divided into separate screens.
      • 1988, Marcus Berkmann, Sophistry (video game review) in Your Sinclair issue 30, June 1988

      • 1989, Compute (volume 11, page 51)

   4. (computing) The visualised data or imagery displayed on a computer screen.

5. Definitions related to standing in the path of an opposing player
   1. (American football) Short for screen pass.
   2. (basketball) An offensive tactic in which a player stands so as to block a defender from reaching a teammate.

      Synonym: pick

6. (cricket) An erection of white canvas or wood placed on the boundary opposite a batsman to make the ball more easily visible.
7. (nautical) A collection of less-valuable vessels that travel with a more valuable one for the latter's protection.
8. (architecture) A dwarf wall or partition carried up to a certain height for separation and protection, as in a church, to separate the aisle from the choir, etc.
9. (Scotland, archaic) A large scarf.

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

References

Verb

screen (third-person singular simple present screens, present participle screening, simple past and past participle screened)

1. To filter by passing through a screen.

   Mary screened the beans to remove the clumps of gravel.

2. To shelter or conceal.
3. To remove information, or censor intellectual material from viewing.

   The news report was screened because it accused the politician of wrongdoing.

4. (film, television) To present publicly (on the screen).

   The news report will be screened at 11:00 tonight.

5. To fit with a screen.

   We need to screen this porch. These bugs are driving me crazy.

6. (medicine) To examine patients or treat a sample in order to detect a chemical or a disease, or to assess susceptibility to a disease.
7. (molecular biology) To search chemical libraries by means of a computational technique in order to identify chemical compounds which would potentially bind to a given biological target such as a protein.
8. (basketball) To stand so as to block a defender from reaching a teammate.

   Synonym: pick

9. To determine the source or subject matter of a call before deciding whether to answer the phone.
   • 1987 April 7, Associated Press (story title as printed in New York Times[1])

     A Phone to Screen Calls

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

• screen in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• screen in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• screen on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• censer, scener, scerne, secern

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