Meaning
A metonym for the cinema and the film industry: 'stars of the silver screen' are film actors, and a book 'transferred to the silver screen' has been adapted as a movie. Slightly nostalgic or glamorous in tone today, and also used attributively, as in a silver-screen romance, precisely because literal silvered screens are long gone. Journalistic and gently nostalgic; at home in entertainment writing rather than technical discussion of projection. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The term began literally: early projection screens were coated with metallic paint or dusted with silver or aluminium particles to squeeze more brightness from weak projectors. Wikipedia cites a March 1897 Welsh newspaper advertisement for exhibitor Arthur Cheetham's 'new silver screen', US theatres with 'patent silver-coated screens' from 1909-10, and the transferred sense already in the New York Times of 7 May 1916 ('a parade of the stars of the silver screen'). Etymonline dates the term to 1921, originally of the metallised screens, with the general 'movies' sense following; the OED's first citation is 1924. Metallic screens later returned for polarised 3D projection, so the literal reference outlived the silent era.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- on the silver screen
- silver-screen (adjective)
- stars of the silver screen
Usage Examples
- After fifteen years on stage she finally made the jump to the silver screen.
- The novel's several trips to the silver screen have varied wildly in quality.
- He collects posters from the golden age of the silver screen.