curtain lecture
English edit
Etymology edit
An allusion to the curtains that hung around old-fashioned beds.
Noun edit
curtain lecture (plural curtain lectures)
- A scolding given by a wife to her husband in bed.
- 1649, Francis Quarles, Virgin Widow, act II, scene 1:
- I have pawn'd already her Tuftaffaty Peticote and all her Child-bed linnen, besides two tiffiny Aprons, and her bearing-cloth, for which I have had already two curtaine Lectures, and a black and blue eye.
- 1714, Alexander Pope, The Wife of Bath:
- I still prevailed, and would be in the right, / Or curtain lectures made a restless night.
- 1819, Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle:
- A curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering.
- 1829, William Combe, The Tour of Doctor Syntax, in Search of a Wife, Canto 1:
- Yes, she may toss her head and hector, / But she shall have a curtain lecture ...
- 1846, Douglas William Jerrold, Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures:
- 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 4, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:
- ... in a curtain lecture, I say, Mrs. Sedley took her husband to task for his cruel conduct to poor Joe.
Translations edit
a scolding given by a wife to her husband in bed
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