display

A show or spectacle.

Noun

  1. A show or spectacle.
    • The trapeze artist put on an amazing acrobatic display.
    • The festival has been popular with locals since it began in 2003. This year, in addition to the skies over the Siying Archway Bridge (西瀛虹橋) near the main town of Makung (馬公市), there will be fireworks displays over the...
  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. An electronic screen that shows graphics or text.
  5. The presentation of information for visual or tactile reception.

Origin

From Middle English displayen, from Anglo-Norman despleier and Old French despleier, desploiier, from Medieval Latin displicare (“to unfold, display”), from Latin dis- (“apart”) + plicāre (“to fold”). Doublet of deploy.

Forms

displays

Related

characters CRT cursor digits graphics monitor screen VDU

Verb

  1. To show conspicuously; to exhibit; to demonstrate; to manifest.
    • 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...
    • 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,[…]. - 1963, Margery...
  2. To make a display; to act as one making a show or demonstration.
    • Being the very fellow which of late / Diſplaid ſo ſawcily againſt your Highneſſe […] - c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […]...
  3. To extend the front of (a column), bringing it into line, deploy.
    • The Englishmen[…]display their ranks and[…]press hard upon their enemies. - 1610, William Camden, translated by Philémon Holland, Britain, or A Chorographicall Description of the Most Flourishing Kingdomes, England,...
  4. To make conspicuous by using large or prominent type.
  5. To discover; to descry.
    • And from his seat took pleasure to display / The city so adorned with towers. - [1611?], Homer, “(please specify |book=I to XXIV)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., The Iliads of Homer Prince of Poets. […], London: […]...
  6. To spread out, to unfurl.
    • 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 [...]. - 1590, Edmund...

    Synonyms: splay

Forms

displays displaying displayed

Derived

affect display air display codisplay courtship display DISP displayability displayable display cabinet display case displayer display kerchief display list display tearing display window ferroelectric liquid-crystal display field emission display fireworks display heads-up display head-up display holodisplay liquid crystal display microdisplay misdisplay nondisplayed