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
Miami Herald Archives, Miami Herald, 12 Mar. 2025
Only people who didn’t believe in science itself, the rhetoric on one side went, would doubt the recent guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the official explanation for COVID-19’s origins, the need to enforce curfews.
—Jacob Turcotte, The Christian Science Monitor, 11 Mar. 2025
The quarantine was not based on an honor system; instead, the Ebola Task Force was responsible for enforcing a quarantine as well as a curfew.
—Edna Bonhomme, Rolling Stone, 11 Mar. 2025
During the fighting, government forces imposed curfews in both areas, which began in Jableh near Hmeimim.
—Paul Iddon, Forbes, 9 Mar. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Curfew.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curfew. Accessed 23 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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