film

Reading level: hard

Estimated CEFR level: C1 — Advanced

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

  1. noun a form of entertainment that enacts a story by sound and a sequence of images giving the illusion of continuous movement
  2. noun a medium that disseminates moving pictures
  3. noun photographic material consisting of a base of celluloid covered with a photographic emulsion; used to make negatives or transparencies

Etymology

From Middle English filme, from Old English filmen (“film, membrane, thin skin, foreskin”), from Proto-West Germanic *filmīn-, from Proto-Germanic *filmīn- (“thin skin, membrane”) (compare Proto-Germanic *felma- (“skin, hide”)), from Proto-Indo-European *pél-mo- (“membrane”), from *pel- (“to cover, skin”). Cognate with Old Frisian filmene (“thin skin, human skin”), Middle Dutch velm, vilm (“fleece, film, membrane”), Old High German felm (“peel, skin, wrap”), Old English *felma (in ǣġerfelma (“egg membrane”)). Related also to Dutch vel (“sheet, skin”), German Fell (“skin, hide, fur”), Swedish fjäll (“fur blanket, cloth, scale”), Norwegian fille (“rag, cloth”), Lithuanian plėvē (“membrane, scab”), Russian плева́ (plevá, “membrane”), Ancient Greek πέλμα (pélma, “sole of the foot”). More at fell. Sense of a thin coat of something is 1577, extended by 1845 to the coating of chemical gel on photographic plates. By 1895 this also meant the coating plus the paper or celluloid.

In classic literature

Synonyms

movie, picture, moving picture, moving-picture show, motion picture, motion-picture show, picture show, pic, flick

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