Other forms: masquerades
A masquerade is a pretence, or a party where faces are covered. A masquerade ball, keep up the masquerade, the whole thing was a masquerade.
The figurative sense is the commoner: a masquerade is a performance that hides what is really going on. The party sense belongs to Venice above all, where masks let ranks mix, which was rather the point of the whole business.
1nounmasqueradeA pretence, or a party where faces are covered.
“Everyone wore masks and gowns to the masquerade at the palace.”
masquerade is a pretence, or a party.
Italian mascherata comes from maschera, a mask, from a Late Latin word for a ghost or a mask.
Medieval Latin
masca — mask
Italian
mascherata — masquerade
Middle French
mascarade
English, today
masquerade
Built from
The noun is borrowed from Middle French mascarade, masquarade, masquerade (modern French mascarade (“masquerade, masque; farce”)), and its etymon Italian mascherata (“masquerade”), from maschera (“mask”) + -ata. Maschera is derived from Medieval Latin masca (“mask”): see further there. The English word is cognate with Latin masquarata, Portuguese mascarada, Spanish mascarada. The verb is derived from the noun.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA