curfew
noun
Pam CarrollWomen's Wear DailySusan Soo-Hyun Chung
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What is the origin of curfew?
Curfews set by parents (and kept or broken by their offspring) do not echo the origins of the word curfew in any discernable way—if they did, they’d need to at least hint at the sound of a bell. When curfew was first used in the 14th century, it referred to the sounding of a bell at evening to alert people that they should cover their hearth fires for the night—a necessary warning, as many European houses in the Middle Ages were close enough to each other that fires could spread easily from one to the next. The word came to English from Anglo-French, in which the signal was called coverfeu, a compound of covrir, meaning “to cover,” and feu, “fire.” Even when hearth fires were no longer regulated, many towns had other rules that called for ringing an evening bell, including one that required people to be off the streets by a given time, a development that granted curfew permission to go out and about with a broader meaning.
Examples of curfew in a Sentence
Nayara Batschke and Matias Basualdo , arkansasonline.com, 27 Feb. 2025
After a period in a refugee camp, with Israeli soldiers deeming land deeds invalid, the narrative jumps to 1978, to a territory populated by Palestinians crammed in modest quarters, without citrus trees and with regular curfews.
—Tomris Laffly, Variety, 26 Jan. 2025
The protests lasted for more than a week and at one point prompted the city to institute, then revoke, a night curfew in an attempt to quell unrest.
—Robert Salonga, The Mercury News, 24 Jan. 2025
The storm was so severe in some areas that a curfew was installed.
—Kristen Waggoner, Newsweek, 21 Jan. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Curfew.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curfew. Accessed 15 Mar. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
curfew
noun
Middle English curfew "an order to be off the streets at a certain time," from early French coverfeu "signal to cover a hearth fire, curfew," from covrir "to cover" and feu "fire"
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