Masquerade

Definitions

1. An assembly or party of people wearing (usually elaborate or fanciful) masks and costumes, and amusing themselves with dancing, conversation, or other diversions.
   also, attributive
2. The act of wearing a mask or dressing up in a costume for, or as if for, a masquerade ball.
   also, attributive
3. An act of living under false pretenses; a concealment of something by a false or unreal show; a disguise, a pretence; also, a pretentious display.
   also, attributive, figuratively
4. An assembly of varied, often fanciful, things.
   also, attributive, figuratively
5. A cosplay event at which costumed attendees perform skits.
   also, attributive, slang
6. A dramatic performance by actors in masks; a mask or masque.
   also, attributive, obsolete
7. A Spanish entertainment or military exercise in which squadrons of horses charge at each other, the riders fighting with bucklers and canes.
   also, attributive, obsolete, rare

Equivalents

Examples

“I was invited to the masquerade party at their home.”

“What guards the purity of melting Maids, / In courtly Balls and midnight Maſquerades, / Safe from the treach'rous friend, and daring ſpark, / The glance⟳ by day, the whiſper in the dark; / [...] / 'Tis but their Sylph, the wiſe Celeſtials know⟳, / Tho' Honour is the word with Men below.”

“Verres in the youth of Cicero, Catiline and Clodius in his middle age, Mark⟳ Antony in his old age, have⟳ all been left to operate⟳ on the modern reader's feelings precisely through that masquerade of misrepresentation which invariably accompanied the political eloquence of Rome.”

CEFR level