CURIOUS • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Curious

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/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.

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Etymology of 'Curious'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Curious" Quotes from Famous Books

... an edifice the Casino disappoints, and if one is not pressingly curious about the interior, one rather lingers on the terrace overlooking the sea, and the lines of the railroad following the shore, and the panorama of the several towns. It is charming to sit there, and if it is in the afternoon, you may see an artist there painting water-colors ...

— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... of Friedland is described in Lord Hutcbinson's despatch (Records: Prussia, vol. 200—in which volume are also Colonel Sonntag's reports, containing curious details about the Russians, and some personal matter about Napoleon in a letter from an inhabitant of Eylau; also Gneisenau's appeal ...

— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... operation, some of its important provisions being limited to take effect at dates yet in the future. The general provisions of the law have been in force less than sixty days. Its permanent effects upon trade and prices still largely stand in conjecture. It is curious to note that the advance in the prices of articles wholly unaffected by the tariff act was by many hastily ascribed to that act. Notice was not taken of the fact that the general tendency of the markets was upward, from influences wholly apart from the recent ...

— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the worlds I ever broke into, this one's the most curious," said Red. "And one of the curiousest things in it is that I think it's queer. Why should I, now? What put it into our heads that affairs ought to go so and so and so, when they never do anything of the sort? Take any book ...

— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... as something dreadful, incomprehensible, and curious! What can he be telling the other with such warmth?" she thought, staring at two men who walked by. "Can one ever tell anyone what one is feeling? I meant to tell Dolly, and it's a good thing I didn't tell her. How pleased she would have been at my misery! She would have concealed ...

— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

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