Cortine

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A hanging cloth or fabric used as a screen or decoration ; a filmy, curtain-like membrane stretching from the cap edge to the stem in certain mushrooms
2. Drapery or fabric hung as a covering or ornament ; the delicate web-like tissue that partially joins a fungal cap to its stalk
3. A suspended piece of material serving to conceal or adorn ; a gossamer veil-like structure that partly connects the pileus and stipe of particular fungi

Etymology: The Latin "cortina" meant a cauldron or kettle, a round metal vessel, and it passed into Italian as "cortina," meaning a curtain. The link between a pot and a hanging cloth is not fully explained, but a rounded shape may have connected the two. French took the Italian word as "courtine," and English later borrowed it, mainly in its sense of a curtain. In English it is now obsolete. Its most lasting use was in military engineering, where it named the stretch of wall running between two bastions. The image is of a fortress wall hung like a curtain between two towers, and the word still appears in discussions of early modern fortification.