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Mask   /mæsk/   Listen
noun
Mask  n.  
1.
A cover, or partial cover, for the face, used for disguise or protection; as, a dancer's mask; a fencer's mask; a ball player's mask.
2.
That which disguises; a pretext or subterfuge.
3.
A festive entertainment of dancing or other diversions, where all wear masks; a masquerade; hence, a revel; a frolic; a delusive show. "This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask."
4.
A dramatic performance, formerly in vogue, in which the actors wore masks and represented mythical or allegorical characters.
5.
(Arch.) A grotesque head or face, used to adorn keystones and other prominent parts, to spout water in fountains, and the like; called also mascaron.
6.
(Fort.)
(a)
In a permanent fortification, a redoubt which protects the caponiere.
(b)
A screen for a battery.
7.
(Zool.) The lower lip of the larva of a dragon fly, modified so as to form a prehensile organ.
8.
A person wearing a mask; a masker. "The mask that has the arm of the Indian queen."
9.
(Sporting) The head or face of a fox.
Mask house, a house for masquerades. (Obs.) Death mask, a cast of the face of a dead person.


verb
Mask  v. t.  (past & past part. masked; pres. part. masking)  
1.
To cover, as the face, by way of concealment or defense against injury; to conceal with a mask or visor. "They must all be masked and vizarded."
2.
To disguise; to cover; to hide. "Masking the business from the common eye."
3.
(Mil.)
(a)
To conceal; also, to intervene in the line of.
(b)
To cover or keep in check; as, to mask a body of troops or a fortress by a superior force, while some hostile evolution is being carried out.


Mask  v. i.  
1.
To take part as a masker in a masquerade.
2.
To wear a mask; to be disguised in any way.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Mask" Quotes from Famous Books



... placed upon the throne. A conspiracy against the usurper was now formed by the great men of the state, but Wang Mang speedily crushed plot and plotters, rid himself of the new boy emperor in the same arbitrary fashion as before, and, throwing off the mask he had thus far worn, had himself proclaimed emperor of the realm. It was the Han dynasty he had in this arbitrary fashion brought to an end. He called his dynasty by the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... our friend's not satisfied," returned the mask. "And yet we've done our best. Well then, Jean Maret, we will offer you a change. Doubtless you have seen the dance which is inspired by the bite of our famous black spider. Let us see if our good steel may not be able to supply the place of the spider. Come then, ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... was to have such a tumult of feeling within, and know that the same must be tenfold multiplied in the hearts of those two girls, and yet go through all the domestic conventionalities, each wearing a mask of commonplace ease, as though nothing ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were worthy of notice. Line by line he studied them. From the high forehead which bulged over the clear blue eyes, to the delicately ovaled chin. The face was emotionless. Only the curve of the thin lips showed the man beneath the mask. The ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... sincerity fundamentally noble—is as far from being a truthful picture of the village as a conventional panegyric. The ordinary photographer, who irons out the warts and the wrinkles, gives his subject a smooth lying mask instead of a face; but a photograph that should make the defects more prominent than the eyes, nose, and mouth would not ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps


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