Proscenium
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 The stage area between the curtain and the orchestra.
"It looks like a film, a meticulous, detailed, visually balanced wide-screen Wes Anderson one. There’s no proscenium, no stage, no wings, no audience."
- 2 the wall that separates the stage from the auditorium in a modern theater wordnet
- 3 The stage area immediately in front of the scene building.
- 4 the part of a modern theater stage between the curtain and the orchestra (i.e., in front of the curtain) wordnet
- 5 The row of columns at the front of the scene building, at first directly behind the circular orchestra but later upon a stage.
"The front of the scene-building and of the parascenia came to be decorated with a row of columns, the proscenium (πρό, "before"+σκηνή)."
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- 6 A proscenium arch.
"Screamers trumpeted from the roof of the supermarket, white storks rattled their bills as their surveyed the town from the proscenium of the filling-station."
Example
More examples"It looks like a film, a meticulous, detailed, visually balanced wide-screen Wes Anderson one. There’s no proscenium, no stage, no wings, no audience."
Etymology
From Latin proscaenium (“in front of the scenery”), from Ancient Greek προσκήνιον (proskḗnion), from πρό (pró, “before”) + σκηνή (skēnḗ, “scene building”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.