Word.ws English Dictionary

curry

/kɝ.i/UK/ˈkʌ.ɹi/

curry noun: one of a family of dishes originating from Indian cuisine, flavored by a spiced sauce. Also the obsolete form of quarry.

curry: one of a family of dishes originating from Indian cuisine, flavored by a spiced sauce
Image: Jacklee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

curry (countable and uncountable, plural curries)

  1. One of a family of dishes originating from Indian cuisine, flavored by a spiced sauce.
    • beef curry
    • vegetarian curry
    Synonyms:
    Ruby Murray
  2. A spiced sauce or relish, especially one flavored with curry powder.
  3. Curry powder.
    Synonyms:
    curry powder
  4. (derogatory, ethnic, slur, incel slang) A person of South Asian heritage.
    • […] while another tells us that white women “are also THE most racist group of foids. they would rather put a bullet through their brain than date a curry or sandcel.”2020, Anthony Glyn Burton, "'I would do anything to not call this place home': The black pill, involuntary celibacy, and the neoliberal male grasp in digital incel communities", thesis submitted to...
    • For example, spicycurry says, “STOP THE COPE NOW. The only ones who should be complaining about race are us curries who are literally at the bottom of the pile.”2020, Joshua A. Segalewitz, "'You Don’t Understand... It’s Not About Virginity': Sexual Markets, Identity Construction, and Violent Masculinity on an Incel Forum Board", thesis submitted to the...

Verb (1)

curry (third-person singular simple present curries, present participle currying, simple past and past participle curried)

  1. (transitive) To cook or season with curry powder.

Verb (2)

curry (third-person singular simple present curries, present participle currying, simple past and past participle curried)

  1. (transitive) To groom (a horse); to dress or rub down a horse with a curry comb.
    • Your short horse is soon curried.1610–1614, John Fletcher, “The Tragedie of Valentinian”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act II, scene i
    • One day I was out in the barn and he drifted in. I was currying the horse and he set down on the wheelbarrow and begun to ask questions.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XI, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
  2. (transitive) To dress (leather) after it is tanned by beating, rubbing, scraping and colouring.
  3. (transitive) To beat, thrash; to drub.
    • I have seen him curry a fellow's carcase handsomely.c. 1619–1621, John Fletcher, “The Island Princesse”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act IV, scene ii
    • […]By setting brother against brother / To claw and curry one another.1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]. Canto I.”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678...
  4. (figuratively, transitive) To try to win or gain (favour) by flattering.
    • A middle-aged woman waves and calls to her, as if she, like the hungry reporters, were currying the girl's favor: Florence Aadland (Sarandon, in a wily, multilayered performance), Beverly's mother, wears an expression of maternal concern, though her self-serving motives become increasingly clear.2014 August 27, Stephanie Zacharek, “The Last of Robin Hood Wrestles with a Star's Underage Love”, in The Village Voice, archived from the original on 03 Sep 2014

Verb (3)

curry (third-person singular simple present curries, present participle currying, simple past and past participle curried)

  1. (transitive) To perform currying upon.
    • The easiest way to curry parameters is to create a function that takes a parameter block and returns a function that will call the original function with the presupplied parameters as defaults […].2011, Zachary Kessin, Programming HTML5 Applications: Building Powerful Cross-Platform Environments in JavaScript, "O'Reilly Media, Inc.", →ISBN, page 21
    • Next, we curry the avg function to 3 arguments and put it into an option.2015, Leonardo Borges, Clojure Reactive Programming, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 194

Verb (4)

curry (third-person singular simple present curries, present participle currying, simple past and past participle curried)

  1. (intransitive, obsolete) To scurry; to ride or run hastily
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To cover (a distance); (of a projectile) to traverse (its range).
    • I am not hee that can ... by midnight leape my horse, curry seauen miles.1608, George Chapman, The Conspiracie, and Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron, section 2.245
    • All these shots shall curry or finish their ranges in times equal to each other.1662, Thomas Salusbury, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogue Two)
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To hurry.
    • A sermon is soon curryed over.1676, Andrew Marvell, Mr. Smirke, section 34

Proper noun capitalized: Curry

Curry

  1. A surname from Irish, anglicized from Irish Ó Comhraidhe (“descendant of Comhraidhe”).
    • Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry has accepted the role of assistant general manager for the basketball programs at alma mater Davidson College.2025 March 11, Matias Grez, “Steph Curry accepts assistant general manager role at alma mater Davidson College”, in CNN, archived from the original on 16 Mar 2025
  2. An Irish surname, a variant of Corr.
  3. An Irish surname, a variant of Currie.
  4. A Scottish surname from Scottish Gaelic, a variant of Currie.
  5. A village and townland in County Sligo, Ireland (Irish grid ref G 4906).
  6. An unincorporated community in Pike County, Alabama.
  7. An unincorporated community in Talladega County, Alabama.
  8. An unincorporated community in Walker County, Alabama.
  9. A ghost town in Alaska.
  10. An unincorporated community in Twin Falls County, Idaho.

Also used as

curry is also the obsolete form of quarry.

curry meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Bengali

curry in Hindi

dish
करी karī
sauce or relish
करी karī, सालन sālan

curry in Tamil

dish
கறி kaṟi
sauce or relish
கறி kaṟi

curry in Marathi

sauce or relish
कालवण kālvaṇ

curry in Bengali

dish
তরকারী torkari, সালন śalon
sauce or relish
কারি kari
More languagesFewer languages
curry in Telugu
కూర kūra
curry in Malayalam
കറി kaṟi
curry in Kannada
ಮೇಲೋಗರ mēlōgara
curry in Punjabi
ਕਰੀ
curry in Gujarati
શાક śāk, રસો raso
curry in Sanskrit
क्वथिता kvathitā
curry in Assamese
আঞ্জা añza, তৰকাৰী torkari
curry in Pashto
کاری kâri
curry in Tagalog
kari
curry in Arabic
كاري kārī, كَارِي kārī
curry in Malay
kari
curry in Indonesian
kari
curry in Persian
خورش کاری xoreš kâri
curry in Thai
แกงกะหรี่ gɛɛng-gà-rìi, กะหรี่ gà-rìi, แกง gɛɛng
curry in Vietnamese
cà ri, ca ri, cà ry
curry in Myanmar
ဟင်း hang:, ငါးပိချက် nga:pi.hkyak

Examples of curry in a sentence

  • Sorry, I'm a bit flatulent at the moment - just eaten some curry.
  • We're going down to the Indian for a curry—wanna join us?
  • Cube the ham right after adding the curry to the rice.

All 40 example sentences with curry

Synonyms of curry

Forms of curry

Noun
pluralcurries
alternative form (obsolete)currey
alternative form (archaic)currie
Verb
third-person singular presentcurries
present participlecurrying
past participlecurried
pastcurried

Plural of curry: curries

Origin of curry

1747 (as currey, first published recipe for the dish in English), from Tamil கறி (kaṟi), influenced by existing Middle English cury (“cooking”), from Middle French cuyre (“to cook”) (whence also cuisine), from Vulgar Latin cocere, from Latin coquere. Earlier cury found in 1390 cookbook Forme of Cury (Forms of Cooking) by court chefs of Richard II of England.

From Middle English currayen, from Old French correer (“to prepare”), presumably from Vulgar Latin *conredare, from Latin com- (a form of con- (“with; together”)) + a verb derived from Proto-Germanic *raidaz. More at ready.

Named after American mathematician Haskell Curry.

Words formed from curry

Phrases with curry

11 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with curry

1 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about curry

What does curry mean?
Curry means one of a family of dishes originating from Indian cuisine, flavored by a spiced sauce.
What is curry in Hindi?
Curry in Hindi is करी (karī), सालन (sālan). See Curry meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is curry?
Curry can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce curry?
Curry is pronounced /ˈkʌ.ɹi/ (UK).
What is the plural of curry?
The plural of curry is curries.

Words near curry in the dictionary

  1. curromycin
  2. curromycins
  3. Curros
  4. Currowan
  5. currs
  6. curry
  7. curry bread
  8. curry breads
  9. curry chip
  10. curry chips
  11. curry comb

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: curry (page history and authors); Curry (page history and authors); curry (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-ne-curry.ogg.

Cite this entry: “curry.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/curry. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.