Screen

How to spell screen

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce screen

What does screen mean?

1. nounThe flat surface of a device on which images, text, or video are shown.
2. nounA fixed or movable panel used to divide, shelter, or conceal a space.
3. verbTo examine people or things in order to filter out those that do not meet a standard.
4. verbTo show a film or programme to an audience.

Screen in a sentence

• noun

  The phone screen cracked when it slipped off the table.

• noun

  A folding screen separated the doctor's examination area from the waiting room.

• verb

  The clinic will screen every patient for high blood pressure.

• verb

  The festival will screen the director's new documentary on Friday.

• noun

  Hours of staring at a computer screen left her eyes tired.

• noun

  They fitted a fine mesh screen over the window to keep insects out.

Where does screen come from?

Language of origin: French

Screen came into Middle English in the 1300s as 'screne', borrowed from the Old North French word 'escren', meaning a fire-guard or partition that shields a person from heat or draught. That French form was itself rooted in a Germanic word for protection: compare Middle Dutch 'scherm' and Old High German 'skirm', both meaning a shield or cover, which is the same family that gives modern German 'Bildschirm' for a display screen. The earliest English sense was strictly physical, a movable panel set up to block fire, wind, or prying eyes. From the idea of a flat surface that intercepts something, the word stretched to mean a surface onto which images were projected, and by the early twentieth century it named the cinema and then the television and computer display. The 'filtering' senses, as in a coal screen that sifts material or screening job applicants, grew naturally from the notion of a barrier that lets some things through and holds others back, and the spelling has stayed simple throughout, with the double 'e' as its only feature to remember.

How the word is built

• screen (root, from Old North French escren: a shield or partition)