# Lace-curtain

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### **PRONUNCIATION:**

(LAYS-kuhr-tuhn)

### **MEANING:**

*adjective*: Aspiring to or pretentiously displaying middle-class respectability.

### **ETYMOLOGY:**

From the lace curtains once fashionable in middle-class homes. Earliest documented use: 1824.

### **NOTES:**

The expression arose in 19th-century America, often among Irish immigrants themselves, to draw a class line between the lace-curtain Irish -- those striving for middle-class refinement -- and the shanty Irish, who were poorer and lived in simple one-room cabins.

Today, the term survives as a light jab at anyone decorating their life a bit too finely while hoping no one peeks behind the curtain.