Other forms: curfews
A curfew is a rule that everybody must be off the streets by a set hour. Impose a curfew, break the curfew, a nightly curfew.
It is a measure of emergency or occupation, and curfews are imposed by governments and lifted by them. Parents also set curfews for teenagers, which is the domestic use and much the commoner in ordinary conversation. Note the standard collocations: impose, enforce, lift and violate a curfew. And the word is sometimes used for a noise deadline — an airport curfew stops flights after a certain hour.
1nouncurfewA rule that everybody must be off the streets by a set hour.
“The curfew was lifted after eleven weeks.”
2nountimeA time by which somebody must be home.
“Her curfew was ten and it was never once kept.”
curfew is a rule about time.
Old French cuevre-fu means cover the fire — the evening bell that told townspeople to put out their hearths, when a fire left burning could take a whole timber town. The command survives in a word that no longer has anything to do with fire.
Old French
cuevre-fu
Middle English
curfu
English, today
curfew
Built from
From Middle English curfu, from Old French cuevre-fu (French couvre-feu), from the imperative of covrir (“to cover”) + fu (“fire”). Compare kerchief.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA