curtain

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A piece of fabric or other material that hangs in a window or open space as a decoration, shade, screen, or divider.
• noun Something that functions as or resembles a screen, cover, divider, or barrier.
• noun The movable screen or drape in a theater or hall that separates the stage from the auditorium or that serves as a backdrop.
• noun The rising or opening of a theater curtain at the beginning of a performance or act.
• noun The time at which a theatrical performance begins or is scheduled to begin.
• noun The fall or closing of a theater curtain at the end of a performance or act.
• noun The part of a rampart or parapet connecting two bastions or gates.
• noun Architecture A curtain wall.
• noun The end.
• noun Absolute ruin.
• noun Death.
• transitive verb To provide (something) with a curtain or curtains.
• transitive verb To close off (something) with a curtain or curtains.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A hanging screen of a textile fabric (or rarely of leather) used to close an opening, as a doorway or an alcove, to shut out the light from a window, and for similar purposes. See blind, shade, portière, lambrequin; also altar-curtain and hanging.
• noun Hangings used to shut in or screen a bedstead.
• noun Hence Whatever covers or conceals like a curtain or hangings.
• noun One of the movable pieces of canvas or other material forming a tent.
• noun In fortification, that part of a rampart which is between the flanks of two bastions or between two towers or gates, and bordered with a parapet, behind which the soldiers stand to fire on the covered way and into the moat. See cuts under bastion and crown-work.
• noun An ensign or flag.
• noun In mycology, same as cortina.
• noun A plate in a lock designed to fall over the keyhole as a mask to prevent tampering with the lock.
• noun The leaden plate which divides into compartments the large leaden chamber in which sulphuric acid is produced by the oxidation of sulphurous compounds in the ordinary process of manufacture.
• To inclose with or as with curtains; furnish or provide with curtains.
• noun In hydraul. engm., a woven fabric of brushwood or withes, such as branches of willows, placed in a stream to retard the current and permit the deposition of silt, or to compel scour and remove it.
• noun A vertical fold of the mantle within the margins of the valves of certain pelecypods (the pectens).
• noun In architecture, a wall which serves as an inclosure rather than as a support. Thus the wall beneath a large window, as in a church, or that between two buttresses which carry the vault and roof without its assistance, is a curtain.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb To inclose as with curtains; to furnish with curtains.
• noun A hanging screen intended to darken or conceal, and admitting of being drawn back or up, and reclosed at pleasure; esp., drapery of cloth or lace hanging round a bed or at a window; in theaters, and like places, a movable screen for concealing the stage.
• noun (Fort.) That part of the rampart and parapet which is between two bastions or two gates. See Illustrations of Ravelin and Bastion.
• noun (Arch.) That part of a wall of a building which is between two pavilions, towers, etc.
• noun obsolete A flag; an ensign; -- in contempt.
• noun in concealment; in secret.
• noun a querulous lecture given by a wife to her husband within the bed curtains, or in bed.
• noun the performance closes.
• noun the performance begins.
• noun To commence or close a performance.
• noun to end the tale, or close the performance.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A piece of cloth covering a window to keep the sun from shining inside.
• noun A similar piece of cloth that separates the audience and the stage in a theater.
• noun fortifications The flat area of wall which connects two bastions or towers; the main area of a fortified wall.
• noun euphemistic death
• verb To cover (a window) with a curtain; to hang curtains.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun any barrier to communication or vision
• verb provide with drapery
• noun hanging cloth used as a blind (especially for a window)