[f. CURTAIN sb.]
1. To furnish, surround, cover, adorn, with a curtain or curtains.
c. 1300. K. Alis., 1028. With samytes, and baudekyns, Weore cortined the gardynes.
c. 1340. Gaw. & Gr. Knt., 1181. G. þe god mon, in gay bed lygez … Vnder couertour ful clere, cortyned aboute.
1605. [see CURTAINED].
c. 1611. Chapman, Iliad, V. 199. Eleven fair chariots stay … Curtain’d and arrast under foot.
1828. Scott, Tapestried Chamber. The tapestry hangings, which … curtained the walls of the little chamber.
b. transf. and fig. To cover, conceal, veil, protect, shut off, as with a curtain.
c. 1430. Lydg., Bochas, VIII. xxiv. Some skyes donne Myght percase curtayne his beames clere.
1588. Shaks., Tit. A., II. iii. 24. When with a happy storme they were surpris’d, And Curtain’d with a Counsaile-keeping Caue.
1607. Walkington, Opt. Glass, ii. (1664), 22. Curtained, and over-shadowed with a palpable darkness.
1861. Geo. Eliot, Silas M., 95. A supreme immediate longing that curtained off all futurity—the longing to lie down and sleep.
Hence Curtained ppl. a., Curtaining vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1605. Shaks., Macb., II. i. 51. Wicked Dreames abuse The Curtain’d sleepe.
1820. Keats, Lamia, II. 18. Near to a curtaining Whose airy texture, from a golden string, Floated into the room.
1836. Dickens, Sk. Boz (1877), 2. The churchwardens … duly installed in their curtained pews.
1883. E. Ingersoll, in Harper’s Mag., Jan., 196/1. A sudden escape from curtaining oak branches brought us full upon the summit.
