Brewer's: Charities

Masks.

“Our ladies laugh at bare-faced trulls when they have those mufflers on, which they call masks, and which were formerly much more properly called charity, because they cover a multitude of sins.” —Rabelais: Pantagruel, v. 27.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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