masking

Pluralmaskings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act of concealing or disguising something so that it stays hidden from view or notice.

   The masking of his true intentions behind a friendly smile fooled everyone.

   Painters rely on the masking of edges to keep stray paint off the trim.

   Similarconcealment, disguise, covering, camouflage

   Oppositedisclosure, exposure

   Note

   Concealment of the self is where this noun does much of its modern work. People "engage in masking," a phrase that turns the act into a social habit. Booth describes it as prettying up and adorning. In Eddie S. Glaude's Democracy in Black (2017), it is the guarded self-presentation of African Americans who work and live in predominantly white spaces. The noun is countable for a particular disguise and uncountable for the practice.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The practice of wearing protective face masks, especially to reduce the spread of illness.

   Masking remained widespread on public transit long after the official mandate ended.

   Hospital staff continued masking throughout the outbreak.

   Note

   Pandemic vocabulary: this sense sits beside social distancing, testing and contact-tracing in public-health talk. Tom McCarthy's 2020 reporting on American Covid protocols uses it this way. Because it shares its spelling with the concealing sense, context does the sorting. Protocols, mandates and transit point here. Disguise and hidden intentions point there.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle of mask.

   The company was masking its losses behind clever accounting.

   By masking the smell, the cleaner made the room tolerable again.

   Note

   The -ing form does three jobs. It builds progressives (was masking its losses), it modifies nouns, and it serves as a gerund. Nearly every use takes an object: you mask a face, a smell or a fact. The one exception is intransitive, meaning to take part as a masker in a masquerade, the verb behind the masked entertainment. Unlike the nouns, the gerund never takes the plural maskings.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A party or other entertainment where the guests wear masks to hide their faces.

   The duke held a grand masking on the eve of the wedding.

   Guests arrived at the masking cloaked and hooded, their faces hidden.

   Similarmasquerade

   Note

   A word for the revel itself, and one that travels in company. Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Romance and Reality (1831) gathers tenants in the hall for "Christmas masking and mumming." John Norman's Players of Gor (1984) lists "maskings, and disguisings" among the fun of carnival. Paired with mumming or disguising, it names the festivity. The plural counts separate occasions or acts of dressing up.

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