curtail.
To cut short the tail of (an animal).
Meaning & usage
To cut short the tail of (an animal).
Curtailing horses procured long horse-hair.
To shorten or abridge the duration of; to bring an end to; to truncate.
When the audience grew restless, the speaker curtailed her speech.
To limit or restrict; to keep in check.
Where this word comes from
Alteration of curtal, from Old French courtault (“which has been shortened”), itself from court (“short”) (from Latin curtus) + -ault
A scroll termination, as of a step, etc.
Where this word comes from
Alteration of curtal, from Old French courtault (“which has been shortened”), itself from court (“short”) (from Latin curtus) + -ault
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.