Other forms: screening, screened, screens
A screen is the flat surface that shows you something: the lit rectangle of a phone, a laptop, a television, the big white one at the cinema. You stare at one all day and then complain about your screen time.
Before glass and pixels, a screen was something that stood in the way, like a fire screen in front of the hearth, a folding screen across the corner of a room, an insect screen in a window. That older sense still runs through the verb. To screen a film is to show it, while to screen people is to check them, whether that means screening applicants, screening calls or screening for a disease, and to screen something off is to hide it behind a panel. The small screen means television and the big screen means cinema. Screenshot, screensaver, touchscreen and screenplay all hang off the same word.
1nounscreenThe flat surface of a phone, computer or television on which pictures and text appear.~40%
“The screen went black in the middle of the film.”
2nounlargeThe large surface a film is shown on, and by extension films as an industry.~36%
“The book finally reached the screen twenty years later.”
3nounuprightA flat upright panel used to hide, divide or protect something.~9%
“A screen kept the draught off the patient's bed.”
4verbshowTo show a film or programme.~2%
“The documentary was screened at three festivals.”
5verbtestTo test or check people or things in order to decide which should be allowed through.~13%
“All donated blood is screened for infection.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 24 sentences found in the wild and placed 22 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: monitor, display
Screen came through Anglo-Norman escren, a firescreen, from Middle Dutch scherm and Proto-Germanic skirmiz, a covering or shelter; German Schirm, an umbrella or shield, is the same word. The oldest root is Proto-Indo-European (s)ker-, meaning to cut or divide. The first screens stood between you and the fire, and the one in your hand is still a thing held up in front of something.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)ker- — to cut, divide
Proto-Germanic
*skirmiz — fur, shelter, covering, screen
Proto-West Germanic
*skirmi
Old Dutch
skirm
Middle Dutch
scherm
Old French
escren
Anglo-Norman
escren — firescreen, the tester of a bed
Middle English
scren
English, today
screen
Built from
From Middle English scren, screne (“windscreen, firescreen”), from Anglo-Norman escren (“firescreen, the tester of a bed”), Old French escren, escrein, escran (modern French écran (“screen”)), from Middle Dutch scherm, from Old Dutch skirm, from Proto-West Germanic skirmi, from Proto-Germanic skirmiz (“fur, shelter, covering, screen”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)ker- (“to cut, divide”). Cognate with Dutch scherm (“screen”), German Schirm (“screen”). a doublet of scherm. An alternative etymology derives Old French escren, escran from Old Dutch scranc (“barrier”) (compare Middle Dutch schranc, schranke (“palisade, trellis, grid”), German Schrank (“cupboard, cabinet”), German Schranke (“fence”)), from Proto-West Germanic skrank, from Proto-Germanic skrankaz.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA