Churchill's iron curtain-speech was for me sort of a curtain-lecture ... "
Josef Stalin
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[ugs.]curtain-lecture
telling-off [coll.]
Gardinenpredigt {f)
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What would be the modern equivalent for “a curtain lecture”?
I chanced on this expression while reading a book by David Crystal. In a chapter dedicated to words that have disappeared from the English language, he mentions this gem in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary:
A curtain-lecture was "a reproof given by a wife to her husband in bed".
I had imagined the phrase referred to the drawing of the bedroom curtains at night. However, World Wide Words tells me that it derived from the four poster bed with its canopy and curtains.
Is there a more modern day <an ink illustration dated 1637 depicting a wife talking to her husband while they are in a four poster bed.> equivalent of this phrase? Because speaking as a once married woman, I confess I used to choose bedtime to have these "in-depth discussions" with my ex (and even today with my current boyfriend).
Failing that, I'd also appreciate any amusing and witty neologisms. Thanks very!
Image: A Curtaine Lecture by Thomas Heywood. London, 1637. The text says the following
When wives preach, tis not in the Husbands power to have their lectures end within an hower. If Hee with patience stay till shee have donn. Shee’l not conclude till twyce the glass Hee runn.
idioms phrase-requests early-modern-english
It is general but henpecking is related.
I'm sure that mild reprimand turns into henpecking :) [present company excepted]. Curtain lecture is mentioned as scolding or nagging in bed also. So it has negative aspects in it. WorldWideWords says that it is not completely disappeared but I never heard of it also. How about "bedtime nagging"?
I'm sure you're not like that :) But the Johnson definition did call it a reproof, so negativity is certainly in view here. –
Likely the term fell out of favor because the activity did. There's little or no social inhibition about criticizing your male partner (or female partner for that matter) in front of the rest of the family any more, so a special term for doing so in that one particular place isn't really needed.
Don't you just love the "alarm clock" on the bedside table?
While it isn't usually restricted to reproofs, Pillow Talk is a more current term for discussions in bed between a husband and wife.
suppose home truths would be somewhere near the mark, though not restricted to husband and wife, or to the bedroom.
A home truth is an unpleasant fact about yourself that someone tells you without any attempt to moderate or excuse it: she was so annoyed when he finally came back that she decided to tell him a few home truths.
Ah! I'm sure there were many "home truths" shared in those "curtain lectures"! lol!
Probably the expression, 'don't wash your dirty laundry in public which refers to the fact that couples should argue about their personal problems privately, in the intimacy of their home.
•People, especially couples, who argue in front of others or involve others in their personal problems and crises, are said to be washing their dirty laundry in public; making public things that are best left private. (In American English, 'don't air your dirty laundry in public' is used.)
First thing coming to mind was a "bedroom brawl" but I think that's already used to describe what sometimes follows "curtain lectures," so how about a "boudoir dressing-down"?
I was going for hidden/in private with gloved, not soft, but it's true, a gloved finger is still visible to all so "mittened" would have been better, but that still doesn't get us back to the bedroom! Oh well, I tried! –
Oh, have another try though!
I'd add this as a comment at the top, but don't have the 50 rep needed for that, so here goes: "a boudoir dressing-down"... seems like "dressing-down" would be appropriate, even if there's something better than "boudoir." – Papa Poule Oct 21 '14 at 17:31
Thanks so much for your encouragement! Fun question! Here's one final neologistic phrase containing its very own neologistic word (a double neologism? or just me getting silly?) for your list: "A nightgown dressdown"(one word, no hyphen, like 'smackdown'). –
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Iron Curtain speech
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Iron Curtain Speech
Winston Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" address of 5 March 1946, at Westminster College, used the term "iron curtain" in the context of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe:
The Iron Curtain as described by Churchill at Westminster College. Note that Vienna (center red regions, 3rd down) is indeed behind the Curtain, as it was in the Austrian Soviet-occupied zone.
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.[35]
Much of the Western public still regarded the Soviet Union as a close ally in the context of the recent defeat of Nazi Germany and of Japan. Although not well received at the time, the phrase iron curtain gained popularity as a shorthand reference to the division of Europe as the Cold War strengthened. The Iron Curtain served to keep people in and information out, and people throughout the West eventually came to accept and use the metaphor.[36]
Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" address was to strongly criticise the Soviet Union's exclusive and secretive tension policies along with the Eastern Europe's state form, Police State (Polizeistaat). He expressed the Allied Nations' distrust of the Soviet Union after the World War II. In September that year, US-Soviet Union cooperation collapsed due to the US disavowal of the Soviet Union's opinion on the German problem in the Stuttgart Council, and then followed the announcement by US President, Harry S. Truman, of a hard line anti-Soviet, anticommunist policy. After that the phrase became more widely used as anti-Soviet term in the West.[37]
In addition, Churchill mentioned in his speech that regions under the Soviet Union's control were expanding their leverage and power without any restriction. He asserted that in order to put a brake on this ongoing phenomenon, the commanding force of and strong unity between the UK and the US was necessary.[38]
Stalin took note of Churchill's speech and responded in Pravda soon afterward. He accused Churchill of warmongering, and defended Soviet "friendship" with eastern European states as a necessary safeguard against another invasion. He further accused Churchill of hoping to install right-wing governments in eastern Europe with the goal of agitating those states against the Soviet Union.[39] Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin's chief propagandist, used the term against the West in an August 1946 speech:[40]
Hard as bourgeois politicians and writers may strive to conceal the truth of the achievements of the Soviet order and Soviet culture, hard as they may strive to erect an iron curtain to keep the truth about the Soviet Union from penetrating abroad, hard as they may strive to belittle the genuine growth and scope of Soviet culture, all their efforts are foredoomed to failure