CURIOUS • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Curious

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/kjˈʊriəs/ Listen

adjective

Curious adj.

1.

Difficult to please or satisfy; solicitous to be correct; careful; scrupulous; nice; exact. (Obs.) "Little curious in her clothes." "How shall we, If he be curious, work upon his faith?"

2.

Exhibiting care or nicety; artfully constructed; elaborate; wrought with elegance or skill. "To devise curious works." "His body couched in a curious bed."

3.

Careful or anxious to learn; eager for knowledge; given to research or inquiry; habitually inquisitive; prying; sometimes with after or of. "It is a pity a gentleman so very curious after things that were elegant and beautiful should not have been as curious as to their origin, their uses, and their natural history."

4.

Exciting attention or inquiry; awakening surprise; inviting and rewarding inquisitiveness; not simple or plain; strange; rare. "Acurious tale" "A multitude of curious analogies." "Many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore." "Abstruse investigations in recondite branches of learning or sciense often bring to light curious results."

Curious arts, magic. (Obs.) "Many... which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them."

Synonyms: Inquisitive; prying. See Inquisitive.

See images of 'Curious'

Etymology of 'Curious'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Curious" Quotes from Famous Books

... better word than that?" she would flyte at him at the second cry; and if the bird would crow the three times, she would be lavish with the feeding and grow cheerful. And there was a time when Mistress Helen was with her at this task, and curious at ...

— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... feast that King Mark made came in Eliot the harper, and because he was a curious harper, men heard him sing the lay that Dinadan had made, the which spake the most villainy of King Mark's treason that ever man heard. When the harper had sung his song to the end, King Mark was wonderly wroth, for he deemed that the ...

— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler

... curious disposition she naturally had, and she did not think it advisable to start any lengthy discussion with her. Nor did she feel justified to protract her stay, so after sipping her tea, she intimated to Pao-ch'ai her intention to go, and they quitted ...

— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... the kind of woman I wanted. I made an engagement with her, and I didn't have a dollar. I was engaged to marry for three years before I married. I knowed it wouldn't do for me to marry her the way she was raised and I didn't have nothing. It looked curious for me to want that woman. I wanted her, and I had sense. I had sense enough to know how I must carry myself to get her. Now it looks like a young man wants all the women and ...

— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... McCurdie, bending across the carriage, and speaking with a curious intensity of voice, "d'ye know I'd give a hundred pounds to be able ...

— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke

Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com