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Webster 1913 Edition


Screen

Screen

(skrēn)
,
Noun.
[OE.
scren
, OF.
escrein
,
escran
, F.
écran
, of uncertain origin; cf. G.
schirm
a screen, OHG.
scirm
,
scerm
a protection, shield, or G.
schragen
a trestle, a stack of wood, or G.
schranne
a railing.]
1.
Anything that separates or cuts off inconvenience, injury, or danger; that which shelters or conceals from view; a shield or protection;
as, a fire
screen
.
Your leavy
screens
throw down.
Shakespeare
Some ambitious men seem as
screens
to princes in matters of danger and envy.
Bacon.
2.
(Arch.)
A dwarf wall or partition carried up to a certain height for separation and protection, as in a church, to separate the aisle from the choir, or the like.
3.
A surface, as that afforded by a curtain, sheet, wall, etc., upon which an image, as a picture, is thrown by a magic lantern, solar microscope, etc.
4.
A long, coarse riddle or sieve, sometimes a revolving perforated cylinder, used to separate the coarser from the finer parts, as of coal, sand, gravel, and the like.

Screen

(skrēn)
,
Verb.
T.
[
imp. & p. p.
Screened
;
p. pr. & vb. n.
Screening
.]
1.
To provide with a shelter or means of concealment; to separate or cut off from inconvenience, injury, or danger; to shelter; to protect; to protect by hiding; to conceal;
as, fruits
screened
from cold winds by a forest or hill
.
They were encouraged and
screened
by some who were in high commands.
Macaulay.
2.
To pass, as coal, gravel, ashes, etc., through a screen in order to separate the coarse from the fine, or the worthless from the valuable; to sift.

Webster 1828 Edition


Screen

SCREEN

,
Noun.
[L. cerno, excerno, Gr. to separate, to sift, to judge, to fight, contend skirmish. The primary sense of the root is to separate, to drive or force asunder, hence to sift, to discern, to judge, to separate or cut off danger.]
1.
Any thing that separates or cuts off inconvenience, injury or danger,; and hence, that which shelters or protects from danger, or prevents inconvenience. Thus a screen is used to intercept the sight, to intercept the heat of fire on the light of a candle.
Some ambitious men seem as screens to princes in matters of danger and envy.
2.
A riddle or sieve.

SCREEN

,
Verb.
T.
1.
To separate or cut off from inconvenience, injury or danger; to shelter; to protect; to protect by hiding; to conceal; as fruits screened from cold winds by a forest or hill. Our houses and garments screen us from cold; an umbrella screens us from rain and the sun's rays. Neither rank nor money should screen from punishment the man who violates the laws.
2.
To sift or riddle; to separate the coarse part of any thing from the fine, or the worthless from the valuable.

Definition 2024


screen

screen

English

Inflatable screen (AIRSCREEN) in Granada.

Noun

screen (plural screens)

  1. A physical divider intended to block an area from view, or provide shelter from something dangerous.
    a fire screen
  2. A material woven from fine wires intended to block animals or large particles from passing while allowing gasses, liquids and finer particles to pass.
  3. The informational viewing area of electronic output devices; the result of the output.
    • 1977, Sex Pistols, Spunk, “Problems”:
      You won't find me living for the screen.
  4. The viewing surface or area of a movie, or moving picture or slide presentation.
    • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 1, in The Celebrity:
      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.
  5. One of the individual regions of a video game, etc. divided into separate screens.
    • 1988, Marcus Berkmann, Sophistry (video game review) in Your Sinclair issue 30, June 1988
      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.
    • 1989, Compute (volume 11, page 51)
      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.
  6. (basketball) An offensive tactic in which a player stands so as to block a defender from reaching a teammate.
  7. (baseball) The protective netting which protects the audience from flying objects
    Jones caught the foul up against the screen.
  8. (cricket) An erection of white canvas or wood placed on the boundary opposite a batsman to make the ball more easily visible.
  9. (mining, quarrying) A frame supporting a mesh of bars or wires used to classify fragments of stone by size, allowing the passage of fragments whose a diameter is smaller than the distance between the bars or wires.
  10. (printing) A stencil upon a framed mesh through which paint is forced onto printed-on material; the frame with the mesh itself.
  11. (nautical) A collection of less-valuable vessels that travel with a more valuable one for the latter's protection.
  12. (architecture) A dwarf wall or partition carried up to a certain height for separation and protection, as in a church, to separate the aisle from the choir, etc.
  13. (genetics) A technique used to identify genes so as to study gene functions.

Synonyms

  • (basketball): pick

Derived terms

Translations

References

  1. Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. "screen" (NY: Gramercy Books, 1996), 1721.

Verb

screen (third-person singular simple present screens, present participle screening, simple past and past participle screened)

  1. To filter by passing through a screen.
    Mary screened the beans to remove the clumps of gravel.
  2. To remove information, or censor intellectual material from viewing
    The news report was screened because it accused the politician of wrongdoing.
  3. (film, television) To present publicly (on the screen).
    The news report will be screened at 11:00 tonight.
  4. To fit with a screen.
    We need to screen this porch. These bugs are driving me crazy.
  5. To examine patients or treat a sample in order to detect a chemical or a disease, or to assess susceptibility to a disease.
  6. To search chemical libraries by means of a computational technique in order to identify chemical compounds which would potentially bind to a given biological target such as a protein.

Derived terms

Translations

Anagrams