Noun: screen
| Singular | screen |
| Plural | screens |
Sample Sentences
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a fire screen
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Your leavy screens throw down. [c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene vi]:]
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There is also great use of ambitious men in being screens to princes in matters of danger and envy [1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Ambition”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC:]
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They'd say he was operating behind a screen of guilelessness and was a superhypocrite. [1987, Saul Bellow, More Die of Heartbreak:]
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Jones caught the foul up against the screen.
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a drug screen, a genetic screen
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The stories did not seem to me to touch life. […] They left me with the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture, with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator. [1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:]
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You won't find me living for the screen […] I ain't equipment I ain't automatic [1977, Sex Pistols, Spunk, “Problems” (song)]
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The idea is to reach the 21st level of an enormous network of interlocking screens, each of which is covered with blocks that you bounce along on. [1988, Marcus Berkmann, Sophistry (video game review) in Your Sinclair issue 30, June 1988]
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Bub and Bob, the brontosaur buddies, must battle bullies by bursting their bubbles. One or two players can move through 100 screens of arcade-style graphics. [1989, Compute, volume 11, page 51:]
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After you turn on the computer, the login screen appears.
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Clicking the Edit button sends you to a screen where you can change the name and description.
Nouns inflected like screen
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. 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”).
2. Cognate with Dutch scherm (“screen”), German Schirm (“screen”). Doublet of scherm.
3. 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. See: French Nouns '
écran', Dutch Nouns '
scherm', German Nouns '
Schirm', German Nouns '
Schrank', German Nouns '
Schranke'.