The Etymology of Masquerade
Masquerade is a word with a fittingly disguised origin. The English word came in around 1597 from French mascarade or Italian mascherata, both meaning a masked entertainment. Both descend from maschera (mask). The deeper history of mask itself is contested — that is, disputed — and offers a small mystery. One school of etymologists argues for a borrowing from Arabic maskhara, meaning mockery, jest, or buffoon, which would have entered medieval Latin and Romance through Sicily or Spain during periods of contact with the Arab world. Another school proposes a pre-Latin Mediterranean substrate root *mask- meaning blackness or covering — possibly the same source that gives mascara, mascot, and the Provençal mascotto (little witch). Both theories are still defended in modern scholarship, and the safe answer is that the deepest root is uncertain. Masquerade balls were a fixture of Italian and Venetian Renaissance courts, then of 17th- and 18th-century French, English, and Russian aristocratic life. The figurative sense of masquerade — a deceptive outward show — was already in use by Shakespeare’s time.