mask

noun masks · masque

1. A cover, or partial cover, for the face, used for disguise or protection. a dancer's mask; a fencer's mask; a ball player's mask
2. That which disguises; a pretext or subterfuge. Grouchy and wary and tender, he’s a sozzled hedonist seemingly out for himself—though his party-animal facade is just a mask for his bottomless generosity.
3. poetic Appearance, likeness. Come then, pure hands, and bear the head ⁠That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep, ⁠And come, whatever loves to weep, And hear the ritual of the dead.
4. A festive entertainment of dancing or other diversions, where all wear masks; a masquerade. This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask.
5. A person wearing a mask. the mask that has the arm of the Indian queen
6. obsolete A dramatic performance in which the actors wore masks and represented mythical or allegorical characters.
7. A grotesque head or face, used to adorn keystones and other prominent parts, to spout water in fountains, and the like.
8. In a permanent fortification, a redoubt which protects the caponiere.
9. A screen for a battery.
10. The lower lip of the larva of a dragonfly, modified so as to form a prehensile organ.
11. A flat covering used to block off an unwanted portion of a scene or image.
12. A pattern of bits used in bitwise operations; bitmask.
13. A two-color (black and white) bitmap generated from an image, used to create transparency in the image.
14. The black fur around a racoon's eyes.
15. The head of a fox, shown face-on and cut off immediately behind the ears.

Similar: vizard

verb masks · masking · masked · masque

1. transitive To cover (the face or something else), in order to conceal the identity or protect against injury; to cover with a mask or visor. They must all be masked and vizarded
2. transitive To disguise as something else.
3. transitive To conceal from view or knowledge; to cover; to hide. Masking the business from the common eye
4. transitive To conceal; also, to intervene in the line of.
5. transitive To cover or keep in check. to mask a body of troops or a fortess by a superior force, while some hostile evolution is being carried out
6. intransitive To take part as a masker in a masquerade. Come Pentecost as quickly as it will, Some five and twenty years, and then we mask’d.
7. intransitive To put on a mask; to wear a mask. Dr. Shelita Dattani, director of professional affairs at the Canadian Pharmacists Association, says […]. “The efforts that we’re taking to reduce the spread of COVID are working … people are masking and distancing and staying away from each other and using hand hygiene, so I think all of these effor
8. intransitive, obsolete To disguise oneself, to be disguised in any way. Ioue sometime maſked in a ſhepheards weede, And by thoſe ſteps that he hath ſcal’d the heauens, May we become immortall like the Gods.
9. intransitive To conceal or disguise one's neurodivergence, especially autism; to learn, practice, and perform certain behaviors and suppress others in order to appear more neurotypical. Masking is exhausting and some autistics require copious amounts of time afterwards to recover from hiding who they are and pretending to be someone they aren't. Even when autistics mask they don't always pass fully as an NT person.
10. transitive To cover or shield something, or a portion of something, so as to prevent reproduction or to safeguard the surface from the colors used when working with an air brush or painting.
11. transitive To set or unset (certain bits, or binary digits, within a value) by means of a bitmask. That is, the lower nibble (the 4 bits 1010 = A) has been masked to zero. This is because ANDing anything with a zero produces a zero, while ANDing any bit with a 1 leaves the bit unchanged[…]
12. transitive To disable (an interrupt, etc.) by setting or unsetting the associated bit. Some hardware interrupts can be masked, or disabled; that is, the CPU is told to ignore them.

noun masks

1. Mesh.
2. Scotland, UK, dialectal The mesh of a net; a net; net-bag.

noun masks

1. UK, dialectal Mash.

verb masks · masking · masked

1. UK, dialectal, transitive To mash.
2. UK, dialectal, transitive (brewing) To mix malt with hot water to yield wort.
3. Cumbria, Durham, Geordie, Northumbria, Scotland, dialectal To be infused or steeped.
4. Cumbria, Durham, Geordie, Northumbria, Scotland, UK To prepare tea in a teapot; alternative to brew.
5. Northern England, Scotland, rare To prepare (to storm). I saw the storm was masking fast, That soon wad fa' on me;[…]

verb masks · masking · masked

1. UK, dialectal, transitive To bewilder; confuse.