curtain line
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of curtain line
First recorded in 1935–40
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Audiences, actors, directors, everyone pressed Shaw to give the play a happy ending — the actress he had written Eliza for rebelled and wrote her own cutesy curtain line — but Shaw wouldn’t budge.
From New York Times • Mar. 27, 2018
What Ben doesn’t know, he tells us in the curtain line, “would fill a book”: he is a blank slate whose life in some way is only now beginning.
From New York Times • Apr. 5, 2011
This time, the curtain line was his: “Nobody’s perfect.”
From New York Times • Sep. 30, 2010
It had a curtain line first written by Oscar Wilde, and it opened Manhattan's latest theatre, the Craig, which is within speaking distance of elevated railways and trolleys on Seventh Avenue.
From Time Magazine Archive
The stage itself extends from the curtain line to the back wall of the theatre, and from left wall to right wall.
From The Art of Stage Dancing The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession by Wayburn, Ned
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
