curtain

Etymology

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

noun

1. A piece of cloth covering a window, bed, etc. to offer privacy and keep out light.
   It is realised that the old Pullman standard sleeper, with its convertible "sections", each containing upper and lower berths, and with no greater privacy at night than the curtains drawn along both sides of a middle aisle, has had its day. 1944 November and December, “"Duplex Roomette" Sleeping Cars”, in Railway Magazine, page 324
2. A 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.[…]” 1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, chapter 2, in The Lisson Grove Mystery
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.
   Captain Rense, beleagring the Citie of Errona for us, […] caused a forcible mine to be wrought under a great curtine of the walles […]. , Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, p.220
5. (euphemistic, also "final curtain", sometimes in the plural) Death.
   For life is quite absurd / And death's the final word / You must always face the curtain with a bow. 1979, Monty Python, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
6. (architecture) That part of a wall of a building which is between two pavilions, towers, etc.
7. (obsolete, derogatory) A flag; an ensign.

verb

1. To cover (a window) with a curtain; to hang curtains.
   The window, softly curtained with dotted swiss, became the focus of my desperate hour-by-hour attention. 1985, Carol Shields, “Dolls, Dolls, Dolls, Dolls”, in The Collected Stories, Random House Canada, published 2004, page 163
2. (figurative) 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; 1593, William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, act II, scene 2
   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. 1840, Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry
   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. 1958, Ovid [Horace Gregory], The Metamorphoses, New York: Viking, Book IV, Perseus, page 115
   But bleakness still curtained the gray horizon. 2003 [2001], A. B. Yehoshua [Hillel Halkin], The Liberated Bride, Harcourt, Part 2, Chapter 17, page 115