curtains

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of curtain.

   The heavy curtains blocked almost every trace of street light.

   Workers hung fresh curtains in each classroom over the weekend.

   Note

   The ordinary plural takes a plain -s and serves every noun use of curtain. That covers window and bed hangings, the stage curtain, and the stretches of fortified wall between two bastions or towers. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb, as in she curtains the window. A determiner or adjective in front (the heavy curtains) tells you it is the noun.

2. 2
   nounfigurativelyuncountableplural

   The final end of something, or a person's death.

   Like the last page of a book: the story simply stops there.

   For the failing newspaper, losing its last big advertiser meant curtains.

   The doctor's grim expression told them it was curtains for the old man.

   Similardoom, death, end

   Note

   A theater image: the curtains close when the show is over, and the word carries that finality off the stage. It exists only in the plural and usually follows be or for, as in it's curtains for you. Said of a person, it means death, often as a threat. Sports writing stretches it to the end of a career, as in he called curtains on it.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of curtain.

   The hotel curtains each suite in heavy blackout fabric.

   Every night the nurse curtains the bed nearest the door for privacy.

   Note

   A transitive verb form, so it almost always has an object after it: the hotel curtains each suite, the nurse curtains the bed. Besides the literal act of hanging curtains, it carries the figurative sense of hiding or separating something as a curtain would. The object that follows is what sets it apart from the plural noun.

4. 4
   nouncolloquialcountableplural

   A ring of clear liquid that gathers into drops near the top of a glass of fortified wine, caused by alcohol evaporating and surface tension shifting.

   Like raindrops gathering on a window and trickling down, but driven by evaporating alcohol instead of cooling air.

   Sommeliers often point to the curtains clinging to the bowl as a rough sign of a wine's body.

   He tilted the glass of sherry and admired the curtains forming just below the rim.

   Similarlegs

   Note

   Wine talk has several names for the same film of drops: legs, tears of wine, wine tears and church windows. Curtains is the colloquial one and is used only in the plural. Physicists file it under the Marangoni effect. As alcohol evaporates near the rim, the surface tension there changes and draws liquid up the glass until it gathers and slides back down.

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