Miscellaneous Definitions — accessories, trims, tools and general fashion terms from Apparel Search
A mask is an object worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance, or entertainment. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and practical purposes. The term covers an unusually wide family of objects, from ritual and theatre masks that transform the wearer into another being, to protective masks that filter air or shield the face in work, sport, medicine and daily life.
A mask is an object worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance, or entertainment. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and practical purposes, as well as in the performing arts and for entertainment.
They are usually worn on the face, although they may also be positioned for effect elsewhere on the wearer's body.
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The word "mask" appeared in English in the 1530s, from Middle French masque "covering to hide or guard the face", derived in turn from Italian maschera, from Medieval Latin masca "mask, specter, nightmare".
Masks are sometimes used to avoid recognition. As a disguise the mask acts as a form of protection for the wearer who wishes to assume a role or task without being identified by others.
Few worn objects serve as many masters as the mask. The definition lists its purposes in a single breath — protection, disguise, performance and entertainment — and each purpose has produced its own branch of mask making. Disguise masks conceal identity, from the domino masks of masquerade balls to the robber's covering in a hundred stories; their work is negative, removing the face from recognition. Performance masks do the opposite of concealment: they replace the wearer's face with a larger, legible identity — a god, an ancestor, an animal, a stock comic character — readable across a ritual ground or to the back row of a theatre. Ceremonial masks, among the oldest artifacts in many cultures, belong to both ideas at once: the wearer is hidden precisely so that the being represented can be present.
Protection is the purpose that turned the mask into equipment. Workers wear respirator and dust masks that filter the air they breathe; medical staff wear surgical masks that limit the spread of droplets; welders and grinders wear face shields against sparks and debris; fencers, catchers, goalkeepers and skiers wear masks and face guards engineered against impact and cold. Each protective mask is specified by what it must stop — particles of a stated size, liquid splash, radiant heat, a puck or a blade — and tested against standards, a world away from the carved ceremonial mask in construction but identical in the definition's sense: an object worn on the face, for a purpose the bare face cannot serve.
A mask must solve the same wearing problem whatever its purpose: it covers the most expressive and most sensitive part of the body, so it must stay in place, allow breathing, and either preserve sight through eye openings or mesh, or deliberately restrict it. Straps and ties around the head or ears carry most masks; molded forms are shaped to the geometry of the face; soft textile and nonwoven masks fold and seal against the cheeks and nose, where a bridge strip of malleable metal often shapes the top edge. Performance masks add the problem of the voice, which must escape a mouth opening or a permeable lower section, and of endurance, since a heavy mask worn through a long ceremony or play taxes the neck and traps heat.
The mask's place in a clothing dictionary is earned by its antiquity and its range: used since antiquity for ceremonial and practical purposes alike, worn in ritual, theatre, festival, work, sport and medicine, made from carved wood, leather, papier-mache, feathers, metal, plastic and filter cloth. It is facial clothing with an argument attached — every mask asserts that for this occasion, this work or this danger, the natural face is not the right face to present or to expose, and offers its substitute.
A mask is an object worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance, or entertainment. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and practical purposes.
Masks serve protection, disguise, performance and entertainment. Protective masks guard against dust, pathogens, fumes or impact; performance and ceremonial masks represent a character, spirit or role rather than the wearer's own face.
Masks have been made from carved wood, leather, papier-mache, molded plastic, metal, textiles and nonwoven filter materials, depending on whether the mask's job is ritual representation, theatrical performance or physical protection.