On Facebook on 5/28, Bert Vaux reported on responses to a query of his on curtains vs. drapes. On that posting, an incidental comment by Heidi Harley:
Did anyone [among BV’s respondents] mention that you can’t threaten anyone with the utterance, It’s drapes for you! But you can with curtains!
Eliciting a series of responses from me:
— 1 As you surely know, this is not some totally idiosyncractic fact, but follows from some other (admittedly, idiosyncratic) facts: the vertical fabric barrier between stage and arena in a theatrical context is called a curtain, period (such a thing in a domestic context might easily be called drapes, but in a theatre — even though the fabric is heavy, opaque, and floor-length — it’s a curtain). Then, since a theatrical display closes with the curtain falling, or its two parts being drawn together, curtains came to mean ‘the end’. Once you’re given the rest, it makes sense, but then the rest is pretty much arbitrary.
— 2 Other things you wouldn’t necessarily predict: not just the end, but in fact an unfortunate end (curtains often conveys death), as in NOAD‘s:
noun curtains: informal [i.e., slang] a disastrous outcome: it looked like curtains for me.
— 3 And then: curtains also tends to be associated with tough-guy speech — talk by gangsters, mobsters, cops, private eyes. This cultural association is something of a surprise; given the cultural associations of both the theatre and interior decoration with gayfolk, especially with effeminate gay men, you might well have have expected curtains ‘disastrous outcome’ to be associated with prissy, fussy men or flamboyant queens. But quite the contrary. The lesson is that cultural associations are packed with historical accidents.
And now a fresh set of comments, on the syntax of curtains ‘disastrous outcome’ (call it final curtains).
— 4 Final curtains is predicative — functioning visibly as the predicative complement of BE (I thought it was curtains (for me)) or understood in this fashion (The water was rising fast around us. Omigod, curtains! [understood: ‘it was curtains for us’]) Compare ✓A disastrous outcome loomed for us with ??Curtains loomed for us.
And then the typical argument structure for final curtains has the dummy subject it and an affected object marked by the P for:
it | BE | curtains | for NP
There are a few alternatives to dummy it as subject, notably demonstrative this and that. And the affected object can be understood from context, as in this example from GDoS:
J. Byrne Slab Boys [film script] 27: Another peep out of you, Farrell, and it’s curtains, capeesh? [AZ: understood as curtains for you]
Context, from Wikipedia:
The Slab Boys Trilogy is a set of three plays by the Scottish playwright John Byrne. … The three plays which make up the trilogy are: The Slab Boys, Cuttin’ a Rug, and Still Life. The trilogy tells the story of a group of young, urban, working-class Scots during the period 1957–1972. [AZ: The Slab Boys is set in a Glasgow factory in 1957]
… The Slab Boys was released as a film in 1997, directed by the author.
Meanwhile, capeesh? ‘do you understand?’ is originally Italian, but has become widespread as slang in English.
And the whole thing nicely illustrates tough-guy final curtains.
Plus a bonus, because I’m the sort of person that I am:
— 5 Another slang item curtains. From GDoS, (the metaphorical) genital curtains:
noun 1 (US gay) the foreskin (of an uncircumcised penis) … 2 the labia …
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