Curtina is a French word, the meaning of which is not clear to everyone. Moreover, it has not one, but several interpretations and is used in various areas of life. For example, in architecture, gardening and forestry. Read more about what it is curtain, read in this article.
In gardening
Dictionaries give several meanings for the word "curtain". Here are the wordings regarding the application of the term under study in landscape art.
Firstly, it is regarded as an obsolete word, which is interpreted as an open area of lawn in a park. It is framed by trees or trimmed bushes.
Secondly, in a landscape park, it is a compact group of bushes and trees that grows freely, apart. At the same time, it is homogeneous.
Thirdly, this is a flower bed, which is lined with turf. The latter is the topsoil, which is densely overgrown with grass and held together by the roots of plants that are perennials. And also these are layers cut from such a layer.
Other meanings of the studied lexeme will be considered below.
Bother areas
The word in question is also used in forestry. There it denotes an area overgrown with trees or shrubs of the same species growing in a mixed forest.
In architecture, a curtain is a group of quarters, which in plan is a rectangle. On the transverse sides, it is limited to slopes to the river.
In fortification, this is the name of a part of the fortress fence, which, as a rule, has a rectangular outline. It connects two neighboring bastions facing each other, and together with them forms a bastion front.
To better understand what a curtain is, let's study the origin of the word.
Etymology
According to linguists, the word has its roots in ancient times. Originally, the Latin language had such a noun as cohors. It had several meanings. These include the following:
- yard;
- cohort;
- fenced area.
Later it became the basis for the formation of the word cortina, which means "veil", "veil" in Vulgar Latin. The latter is a colloquial variety of the literary language, or vernacular Latin. At first it was distributed only in Italy, and then in the provinces throughout the Roman Empire.
From Vulgar Latin in medieval times, the studied lexeme got into the French language, where it took the form of courtine and such a meaning as “curtain”. Meaning the theatrical curtain, whichhung between two poles. In the 16th century, the term began to be used to refer to the rampart connecting the bastions.
It is believed that the word appeared in Russian, having come to us from German, where there is a noun Kurtine. For the first time it is found in the notes of Peter I.
