Word.ws English Dictionary

curtailed

curtailed is the simple past and past participle of curtail.

Meaning of curtail

Verb

curtail (third-person singular simple present curtails, present participle curtailing, simple past and past participle curtailed)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To cut short the tail of (an animal).
    • Curtailing horses procured long horse-hair.
    Synonyms:
    crop, dock
  2. (transitive) To shorten or abridge the duration of; to bring an end to; to truncate.
    • When the audience grew restless, the speaker curtailed her speech.
    Synonyms:
    abbreviate
  3. (figuratively, transitive) To limit or restrict; to keep in check.
    • This is the rump of the C.L.C. branch to Southport Lord Street, which lost its passenger services beyond Aintree from January 7, 1952, whereupon the timetable between Gateacre and Aintree was greatly curtailed.1960 December, “Talking of Trains: Branch report”, in Trains Illustrated, page 708
    Synonyms:
    behedge

See all 4 meanings of curtail

Words formed from curtailed

Phrases with curtailed

Questions about curtailed

What is curtailed the simple past and past participle of?
Curtailed is the simple past and past participle of curtail.

Words near curtailed in the dictionary

  1. curt.
  2. curtail
  3. curtail dog
  4. curtail dogs
  5. curtailable
  6. curtailed
  7. curtailed fox
  8. curtailed foxes
  9. curtailer
  10. curtailers
  11. curtailest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: curtailed (page history and authors); curtail (page history and authors). 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.

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