curtaining

Pluralcurtainings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Fabric used for making curtains.

   The shop sells curtaining by the meter in a wide choice of patterns.

   She chose a thick blackout curtaining for the children's bedroom.

   Similardrapery

   Note

   Usually a mass noun, treated like cloth and bought by length, but it takes a plural when separate pieces or kinds are meant. Elia W. Peattie's A Mountain Woman (1896) has a cabin brightened "with the bright curtainings that Annie had brought". The singular names the stuff, and curtainings counts the lengths or varieties of it.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of curtain.

   The decorator is curtaining the bay windows in heavy linen.

   Curtaining the conservatory kept the harsh afternoon sunlight out.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs. It carries the progressive (is curtaining the bay windows), and as a gerund it names the work itself (curtaining the conservatory took a day). Because the verb is transitive, both uses take a direct object, and both can carry the figurative sense of hiding or separating something as if behind cloth. Keep the gerund apart from the fabric noun, which names the material rather than the job.

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