display [ME] The early meaning of this was ‘unfurl (a banner or sail), unfold’. The word comes via Old French from Latin displicare ‘scatter, disperse’, which came to mean ‘unfold’ in medieval Latin and was also the source of deploy [LME] but not used of troops until the late 18th century. In English the notion of ‘unfurling’ led to ‘show’ [LME], to ‘make a show of’ [E17th]. Splay [ME] was originally a shortening of display.