Word.ws English Dictionary

Curtis

/ˈkɜːtɪs/US/ˈkɝtɪs/

Curtis proper noun: an English surname transferred from the nickname, originally a nickname for a refined or courtly person.

Proper noun

Curtis

  1. An English surname transferred from the nickname, originally a nickname for a refined or courtly person.
  2. A male given name transferred from the surname.
    • A cold world, Curtis, in every office but thine; and therefore, fire.c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • The night once come, our happiness, our unhappiness, — it is all abolished; vanished, clean gone; a thing that has been: ‘not of the slightest consequence’ whether we were happy as eupeptic Curtis, as the fattest pig of Epicurus, or unhappy as job with potsherds, as musical Byron with Giaours and...1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “chapter IV, Happy”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book III (The Modern Worker)
  3. An unincorporated community in Gilchrist County, Florida.
  4. An unincorporated community in Portage Township, Mackinac County, Michigan.
  5. A township in Alcona County, Michigan.
  6. A minor city in Frontier County, Nebraska.
  7. An unincorporated community in Lewis County, Washington.
  8. A municipality in A Coruña province, Galicia, Spain.

Examples of Curtis in a sentence

  • Without undue haste, we named him Curtis simply because we liked the name.1999, Bernie Runstedler, Jr., Breezes Against My Brow, General Store Publishing House., →ISBN, page 77:
  • White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been in contact via intermediaries with Curtis Yarvin, Politico Magazine reported this week.2017 February 10, Rosie Gray, “Behind the Internet's Anti-Democracy Movement”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 10 Jan 2020:

Forms of Curtis

alternative formCurtiss

Origin of Curtis

From Old French corteis and curteis (Modern French courtois (“polite, courteous”). Doublet of courteous.

Words formed from Curtis

Questions about Curtis

What does Curtis mean?
Curtis means an English surname transferred from the nickname, originally a nickname for a refined or courtly person.
How do you use Curtis in a sentence?
Without undue haste, we named him Curtis simply because we liked the name.
What part of speech is Curtis?
Curtis is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Curtis?
Curtis is pronounced /ˈkɝtɪs/ (US).

Words near Curtis in the dictionary

  1. curtin
  2. curting
  3. curtings
  4. curtins
  5. curtious
  6. Curtis
  7. Curtise
  8. curtisin
  9. curtisite
  10. Curtisland
  11. Curtiss

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Curtis (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Curtis.wav.

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