Other forms: curtains
A curtain is the cloth you pull across a window at night. Draw the curtains, net curtains, curtain rail.
Lined ones do real work on heat and light, and blackout lining is the difference between sleeping and not. In theatre the curtain is the divider and, by extension, the end — curtain call, final curtain. The Iron Curtain was Churchill's phrase for the divide across Europe.
1nouncurtainThe cloth pulled across a window.
“She drew the curtains to keep out the morning sun.”
2noundividerThe divider at the front of a stage.
“The audience went quiet as the curtain went up.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
curtain is a hanging cloth.
Also accepted in games: curtains
Old French cortine comes from Latin cortina, a curtain, itself translating a Greek word. The theatrical senses came later.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)ker- (turn)
Latin
cōrtīna — curtain
Old French
cortine
Middle English
curtine
English, today
curtain
Middle English curtine, from Old French cortine, from Latin cōrtīna (“curtain”), a calque from Ancient Greek -.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA