Skip to content
Allin

reveal

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ɹɪˈviːl//
  • Canada//ɹɪˈvil//
  • Australia//ɹɪˈviːl//
  • Australia/[ɹɪˈvɪil]/

The outer side of a window or door frame.

noun

  1. 1

    The outer side of a window or door frame.

    The building has a one-story rusticated limestone base and a canopied entrance with a doorman beneath an attractive, rusticated limestone window reveal on the second floor and a very impressive and ornate limestone window reveal on the third floor flanked by female figureshttps://www.cityrealty.com/nyc/carnegie-hill/1105-park-avenue/review/7216.

  2. 2

    informalA revelation; an uncovering of what was hidden in the scene or story.

    The comedian had been telling us about his sleep being disturbed by noise. Then came the reveal: he was sleeping on a bed in a department store.

    A simple dolly or crane move can be used for an effective reveal. A subject fills the frame, then with a move, something else is revealed.

    Once you find out what’s going on—the girl is a “hungry,” this film’s term for zombies—it’s still interesting enough, if not quite as powerful. That’s basically what you’re in for with this British postapocalyptic survival horror tale, which starts off strong but dilutes its impact with every consecutive reveal.

    Even Westworld—based on a science-fiction novel where robots run amok—ended its second season with the ultimate reveal: human beings are simpler and more predictable than the artificial intelligences we create.

Etymology

From Middle English revēlen, from Old French reveler, from Latin revēlāre (“to reveal, uncover”), from re- (“back, again”) + vēlāre (“to cover”), from vēlum (“a cloth, covering, curtain, veil, awning, sail”) (whence also English veil, English unveil, English voile, Russian вуаль (vualʹ), Russian завуали́ровать (zavualírovatʹ, “to veil”) (compare typologically)). Also compare typologically English uncloak, dismantle, divest, invest, unmask, Russian разобла́чать (razobláčatʹ) (akin to облаче́ние (oblačénije), срыва́ть покро́вы (sryvátʹ pokróvy) (покро́в (pokróv, “cover, covering”)).

verb

  1. 1

    To uncover; to show and display that which was hidden.

    c. 1625, Edmund Waller, Of the Danger His Majesty (being Prince) Escaped in the Road at St Andero Light was the wound, the prince's care unknown, / She might not, would not, yet reveal her own.

    The dispatches revealed details of corruption and kleptocracy that many Tunisians suspected, but could not prove, and would cite as they took to the streets.

  2. 2

    To communicate that which could not be known or discovered without divine or supernatural instruction.

Forms

plural
reveals
past tense
revealed
past participle
revealed
present participle
revealing
third person singular
reveals
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).