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Exhibition vs Display - What's the difference?

exhibition | display |

As nouns the difference between exhibition and display

is that exhibition is an instance of exhibiting, or something exhibited while display is a show or spectacle.

As a verb display is

to spread out, to unfurl.

exhibition

Noun

(en noun)
  • An instance of exhibiting, or something exhibited.
  • A large scale public showing of objects or products.
  • There was an art exhibition on in the town hall.
    a boat exhibition
  • (UK) A financial award or prize given to a student (who becomes an exhibitioner) by a school or university, usually on the basis of academic merit.
  • * 1978 , (Lawrence Durrell), Livia'', Faber & Faber 1992 (''Avignon Quintet ), p. 352:
  • He was a scholarship boy who had won an Exhibition to Oxford, and then, like so many others, had found himself thrown upon the slave market of pedagogy.

    Derived terms

    * exhibitionism * make an exhibition of oneself

    display

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A show or spectacle.
  • (computing) An electronic screen that shows graphics or text.
  • See also

    * characters * CRT * cursor * digits * graphics * monitor * screen * VDU

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (obsolete) To spread out, to unfurl.
  • * 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , II.v:
  • The wearie Traueiler, wandring that way, / Therein did often quench his thristy heat, / And then by it his wearie limbes display , / Whiles creeping slomber made him to forget / His former paine [...].
  • To show conspicuously; to exhibit; to demonstrate; to manifest.
  • * , chapter=12
  • , title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill. It was ugly, gross. Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of speech. In the present connexion […] such talk had been distressingly out of place.}}
  • * {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)
  • , chapter=1 citation , passage=The huge square box, parquet-floored and high-ceilinged, had been arranged to display a suite of bedroom furniture designed and made in the halcyon days of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, […].}}
  • To make a display; to act as one making a show or demonstration.
  • (Shakespeare)
  • (military) To extend the front of (a column), bringing it into line.
  • (Farrow)
  • (printing, dated) To make conspicuous by using large or prominent type.
  • (obsolete) To discover; to descry.
  • * Chapman
  • And from his seat took pleasure to display / The city so adorned with towers.