curtain: [13] Latin cortīna meant ‘round vessel, cauldron’, but in the 4th-century Vulgate we find it being used to translate Greek aulaía ‘curtain’. The reason for this considerable semantic leap seems to have been a link perceived to exist between Greek aulaía, a derivative of aulē ‘court’, and Latin cohort- ‘court’ (source of English court), although in fact there is no etymological connection between cohort- and cortīna. The word passed into Old French as cortine, and from there was acquired by English.
