film

Meanings

Noun

• A thin layer of some substance; a pellicle; a membranous covering, causing opacity.
• A medium used to capture images in a camera.
• A movie.
• Cinema; movies as a group.
• A slender thread, such as that of a cobweb.

Verb

• To record (activity, or a motion picture) on photographic film.
• To visually record (activity, or a motion picture) in general, with or without sound.
• To cover or become covered with a thin skin or pellicle.

Related

Similar words

• movie

Origin

• From Middle English filme, from Old English filmen, from Proto-Germanic *filminją (compare Proto-Germanic *felma-), from Proto-Indo-European, from *pel-. Cognate with Old Frisian filmene, Dutch vel, German Fell, Swedish fjäll, Norwegian fille, Lithuanian plėvē, Russian плева́, Ancient Greek πέλμα. 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.