English
display
Etymology

From Middle English displayen, from Anglo-Norman despleier and Old French despleier, desploiier, from Medieval Latin displicare, from Latin dis- + plicāre ("to fold").

Pronunciation
  • enPR: dĭsplāʹ, IPA: /dɪsˈpleɪ/, /ˈdɪspleɪ/
Noun

display

  1. A show or spectacle.
    The trapeze artist put on an amazing acrobatic display.
  2. A piece of work to be presented visually.
    Pupils are expected to produce a wall display about a country of their choice.
  3. A device, furniture or marketing-oriented bulk packaging for visual presentation for sales promotion.
    Synonyms: cardboard display
  4. (computing) An electronic screen that shows graphics or text.
  5. (computing) The presentation of information for visual or tactile reception.
Translations Translations Translations Verb

display (displays, present participle displaying; simple past and past participle displayed)

  1. (transitive) To show conspicuously; to exhibit; to demonstrate; to manifest.
    Troponyms: brandish, flaunt, show off
    • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC ↗:
      All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill. It was ugly, gross. Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of speech. In the present connexion […] such talk had been distressingly out of place.
    • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC ↗:
      The huge square box, parquet-floored and high-ceilinged, had been arranged to display a suite of bedroom furniture designed and made in the halcyon days of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, […].
  2. (intransitive) To make a display; to act as one making a show or demonstration.
    • c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC ↗, [Act II, scene iv], page 293 ↗:
      Being the very fellow which of late / Diſplaid ſo ſawcily againſt your Highneſſe […]
  3. (military) To extend the front of (a column), bringing it into line, deploy.
    • 1610, William Camden, translated by Philémon Holland, Britain, or A Chorographicall Description of the Most Flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland, […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press for] Georgii Bishop & Ioannis Norton, →OCLC ↗:
      The Englishmen […] display their ranks and […] press hard upon their enemies.
  4. (printing, dated) To make conspicuous by using large or prominent type.
  5. (obsolete) To discover; to descry.
    • [1611?], Homer, “(please specify |book=I to XXIV)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., The Iliads of Homer Prince of Poets. […], London: […] Nathaniell Butter, →OCLC ↗; republished as The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets, […], new edition, volume (please specify the book number), London: Charles Knight and Co., […], 1843, →OCLC ↗:
      And from his seat took pleasure to display / The city so adorned with towers.
      The spelling has been modernized.
  6. (obsolete) To spread out, to unfurl.
    Synonyms: splay
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC ↗:
      The wearie Traueiler, wandring that way, / Therein did often quench his thristy heat, / And then by it his wearie limbes display, / Whiles creeping slomber made him to forget / His former paine [...].
Translations Translations

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