Plural of coulisse; grooves or channels, especially the side wings of a theater stage that slide in and out, or a type of flexible tube used in medical procedures.
From French coulisse, meaning 'groove' or 'channel,' derived from couler (to flow, to slide). The term originally referred to sliding panels in theater before being adopted in medical technology.
The theatrical coulisses were so common in 18th-century French theater that they became the standard for stage design across Europe—essentially, the theater industry's first modular, reusable set pieces!
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