Display

Pronunciation

• enPR: dÄ­splā', IPA: /dɪsˈpleɪ/
• Rhymes: -eɪ

Origin

From Middle English, from Old French despleier, desploier, from Medieval Latin displicare ("to unfold, display"), from Latin dis- ("apart") + plicare ("to fold").

Full definition of display

Noun

1. A show or spectacle.
2. (computing) An electronic screen that shows graphics or text.

Related terms

• characters
• cursor
• digits
• graphics

Verb

1. (obsolete) To spread out, to unfurl.
• 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.v: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 ....
2. (transitive) To show conspicuously; to exhibit; to demonstrate; to manifest.
• 1918, W. B. Maxwell, The Mirror and the Lamp Chapter 12, 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, The China Governess Chapter 1, 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, ….
3. (intransitive) To make a display; to act as one making a show or demonstration.
4. (military) To extend the front of (a column), bringing it into line.
5. (printing, dated) To make conspicuous by using large or prominent type.
6. (obsolete) To discover; to descry.
• ChapmanAnd from his seat took pleasure to display
  The city so adorned with towers.