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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

curve.

Bent without angles; crooked; curved.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/kɜːv/Australia, Received-Pronunciation[ˈkʰɜːv]Australia, Received-Pronunciation/kɚv/General-American[ˈkʰɚv]General-American
  1. Bent without angles; crooked; curved.

    obsolete
    a curve line
    a curve surface
Where this word comes from

Attested since the 1690s, from Latin curvus (“bent, curved”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to bend, curve, turn”) + *-wós. Doublet of curb, shrink, carcer, and cancer.

noun/kɜːv/Australia, Received-Pronunciation[ˈkʰɜːv]Australia, Received-Pronunciation/kɚv/General-American[ˈkʰɚv]General-American
  1. A bend, such as in a road.

    You should slow down when approaching a curve.
  2. A simple figure containing no straight portions and no angles; a curved line.

    She scribbled a curve on the paper.
  3. A grading system based on the scale of performance of a group used to normalize a right-skewed grade distribution (with more lower scores) into a bell curve, so that more can receive higher grades, regardless of their actual knowledge of the subject.

    The teacher was nice and graded the test on a curve.
  4. A grading system based on the scale of performance of a group used to normalize a right-skewed grade distribution (with more lower scores) into a bell curve, so that more can receive higher grades, regardless of their actual knowledge of the subject. A grading system where all raw scores are raised by a set number of points.

    broadly · nonstandard
  5. A continuous map from a one-dimensional space to a multidimensional space.

    analytic
  6. A one-dimensional figure of non-zero length; the graph of a continuous map from a one-dimensional space.

  7. An algebraic curve; a polynomial relation of the planar coordinates.

  8. A one-dimensional continuum.

  9. The attractive shape of a woman's body.

    informal · plural-normally
Where this word comes from

Attested since the 1690s, from Latin curvus (“bent, curved”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to bend, curve, turn”) + *-wós. Doublet of curb, shrink, carcer, and cancer.

verb/kɜːv/Australia, Received-Pronunciation[ˈkʰɜːv]Australia, Received-Pronunciation/kɚv/General-American[ˈkʰɚv]General-American
  1. To bend; to crook.

    transitive
    to curve a line
    to curve a pipe
  2. To cause to swerve from a straight course.

    transitive
    to curve a ball in pitching it
  3. To bend or turn gradually from a given direction.

    intransitive
    the road curves to the right
  4. To grade on a curve (bell curve of a normal distribution).

    transitive
    The teacher will curve the test.
  5. To reject, to turn down romantic advances.

    slang · transitive
    I was once curved three times by the same woman.
Where this word comes from

Attested since the 1690s, from Latin curvus (“bent, curved”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to bend, curve, turn”) + *-wós. Doublet of curb, shrink, carcer, and cancer.

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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.