curtainnoun/ˈkɜːtn̩/

• 1

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

  • He drew the curtains at 11:00pm before falling asleep.
  • 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

  businessentertainmentfabricsA similar piece of cloth that separates the audience and the stage in a theater.

  • “H'm !” he said, “so, so—it is a tragedy in a prologue and three acts. I am going down this afternoon to see the curtain fall for the third time on what[…]will prove a good burlesque ; but it all began dramatically enough. It was last Saturday[…]that two boys, playing in the little spinney just outside Wembley Park Station, came across three large parcels done up in American cloth.[…]”
• 3

  entertainmentlifestyletheaterThe 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

  fortificationsgovernmentmilitaryThe flat area of wall which connects two bastions or towers; the main area of a fortified wall.

  • Captain Rense, beleagring the Citie of Errona for us, […] caused a forcible mine to be wrought under a great curtine of the walles […].
• 5

  Death, final curtain.

  • For life is quite absurd / And death's the final word / You must always face the curtain with a bow.
• 6

  architectureThat part of a wall of a building which is between two pavilions, towers, etc.

• 7

  derogatoryobsoleteA flag; an ensign.

  • Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose
• 8

  The uninterrupted stream of fluid that falls onto a moving substrate in the process of curtain coating.

curtainverb/ˈkɜːtn̩/

• 1

  To cover (a window) with a curtain; to hang curtains.

  • In a large bedroom upstairs, the window of which was thickly curtained with a great woollen shawl lately discarded by the landlady, Mrs. Rolliver, were gathered on this evening nearly a dozen persons, all seeking vinous bliss; all old inhabitants of the nearer end of Marlott, and frequenters of this retreat.
  • The window, softly curtained with dotted swiss, became the focus of my desperate hour-by-hour attention.
• 2

  To hide, cover or separate as if by a curtain.

  • 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;
  • 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.