masquerade means an assembly or party of people wearing (usually elaborate or fanciful) masks and costumes, and amusing themselves with dancing, conversation, or other diversions. It carries an Arena rating of 1944, earned across 74 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, masquerade ranks #93 of 42,749 for Qualifying, #385 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #590 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #849 of 17,126 for Most Satisfying to Say.
masquerade is pronounced /ˌmæskəˈɹeɪd/.
Why “masquerade” is a great word
A social gathering of people wearing masks and costumes, or the act of concealing one's true nature or identity under a false appearance. From Middle French mascarade and its etymon Italian mascherata, from maschera ("mask") + -ata (a suffix forming nouns of action); first attested in English in the 1590s. Unlike "disguise," which is the inert tool of concealment, or "pretense," a simple false claim, a masquerade is the lived performance of the fiction. It is the rustle of silk in a candlelit ballroom, the glint of a stranger's eyes behind a velvet domino, the warmth of shared breath behind a lacquered half-face—a fleeting architecture of sanctioned deceit, where the lie becomes the only truth you can hold.
Etymology
The noun is borrowed from Middle French mascarade, masquarade, masquerade (modern French mascarade (“masquerade, masque; farce”)), and its etymon Italian mascherata (“masquerade”), from maschera (“mask”) + -ata. Maschera is derived from Medieval Latin masca (“mask”): see further there. The English word is cognate with Late Latin masquarata, Portuguese mascarada, Spanish mascarada. The verb is derived from the noun.
noun
- An assembly or party of people wearing (usually elaborate or fanciful) masks and costumes, and amusing themselves with dancing, conversation, or other diversions.e.g.“Near-synonym: costume party”
- The act of wearing a mask or dressing up in a costume for, or as if for, a masquerade ball.
- An act of living under false pretenses; a concealment of something by a false or unreal show; a disguise, a pretence; also, a pretentious display.
- An assembly of varied, often fanciful, things.
- A cosplay event at which costumed attendees perform skits.
- A dramatic performance by actors in masks; a mask or masque.
- A Spanish entertainment or military exercise in which squadrons of horses charge at each other, the riders fighting with bucklers and canes.
verb
- To take part in a masquerade; to assemble in masks and costumes; (loosely) to wear a disguise.e.g.“I’m going to masquerade as an old-fashioned pilot. What are you going to dress up as?”
- To pass oneself off as a different person or a person with qualities that one does not possess; also, to make a pretentious show of being what one is not.e.g.“He masqueraded as my friend until the truth finally came out.”
- To conceal (someone) with, or as if with, a mask; to disguise.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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