curve
/kɜːv//kɚv/
curve adjective: bent without angles; crooked; curved.
Adjective
curve
Noun
curve (plural curves)
- A bend, such as in a road.
- You should slow down when approaching a curve.
- But when we reflect that across the road at the centre of the arc of each curve there was a barricade, and cannon placed to rake the' intervals between the different barricades, the difficulties of the ascent, which is very steep, would be increased even to insurmountability.1877, John Joseph Henry, Account of Arnold's Campaign Against Quebec, J. Munsell, page 171
- A simple figure containing no straight portions and no angles; a curved line.
- She scribbled a curve on the paper.
- However, it should be possible to give more sophisticated spherical spline curves based on the de Castaljau method that are computed using multiple slerps between pairs of points and which work well for arbitrary knot positions (indeed, knot insertion methods for spline curves should suffice for...2001 April, Samuel R. Buss, Jay P Fillmore, “Spherical averages and applications to spherical splines and interpolation”, in ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), volume 20, number 2
- A grading system based on the scale of performance of a group used to normalize a right-skewed grade distribution (with more lower scores) into a bell curve, so that more can receive higher grades, regardless of their actual knowledge of the subject.
- The teacher was nice and graded the test on a curve.
- A grading system where all raw scores are raised by a set number of points.
- A continuous map from a one-dimensional space to a multidimensional space.
- A one-dimensional figure of non-zero length; the graph of a continuous map from a one-dimensional space.
- An algebraic curve; a polynomial relation of the planar coordinates.
- A one-dimensional continuum.
- The attractive shape of a woman's body.
Verb
curve (third-person singular simple present curves, present participle curving, simple past and past participle curved)
- To bend; to crook.
- to curve a line
- to curve a pipe
- To cause to swerve from a straight course.
- to curve a ball in pitching it
- To bend or turn gradually from a given direction.
- the road curves to the right
- […] the shoulders not too wide above, bowing outward from the top to the breast; the back flat from shoulder to tail; the ribs extending horizontally and backwards, and then curving down barrelwise; […]1866, The Missouri Yearbook of Agriculture: Annual Report, Missouri. State Board of Agriculture, page 31
- To grade on a curve (bell curve of a normal distribution).
- The teacher will curve the test.
- To reject, to turn down romantic advances.
- I was once curved three times by the same woman.
curve meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
curve in Hindi
- gentle bend
- चक्कर cakkar, घुमाव ghumāv
- informal: usually in plural: attractive features of a woman or informal: attractive shape of a woman's body
- घुमाव ghumāv
- bend, crook
- मोड़ना moṛnā
curve in Tamil
- வளைவு, வளைகோடு
curve in Marathi
- gentle bend
- वळण vaḷaṇ
curve in Urdu
- بانک, خم, موڑ, پیچ, پیچ و خم
More languagesFewer languages
- curve in Telugu
- వంపు vampu, వంపులు vampulu, వొంపులు vompulu
- curve in Malayalam
- നതി nati, വളവ് vaḷavŭ
- curve in Kannada
- ಬಾಗು, ಬಾಗಿ, ಬಾಗೆ, ಕೊಂಕು ಗೆರೆ
- curve in Punjabi
- ਕਰਵ, ਵਕਰ
- curve in Gujarati
- ચક્કર cakkar, વાંક vā̃k
- curve in Odia
- ବକ୍ରରେଖା, ବକ୍ରରେଖ
- curve in Sanskrit
- अङ्कस् aṅkas
- curve in Assamese
- চকৰ sokor
- curve in Nepali
- वक्र, कर्व, वक्र गर्न
- curve in Tagalog
- kilo, guhit na kilo
- curve in Arabic
- منحنى munḥanā
- curve in Indonesian
- lengkungan, kurva
- curve in Persian
- پیچ pič, منحنی monhani, خم xam
- curve in Vietnamese
- khúc quanh, đường cong
Examples of curve in a sentence
- Its horns are smooth, rounded and form a curve backwards over the neck.1993, Sharad Singh Negi, Kumaun: The Land and the People, page 106:
- Toning down those curves. […] Laugh at that detail now — you won’t when the sun is blinding you at 75 miles an hour on a curve.2016 April 28, Tom Voelk, “Video Review: Hyundai Elantra Offers Fewer Curves, but a Better Ride”, in The New York Times, archived from the...
- The double-track branch curves away southwards at the south end of the station and runs on a banked down gradient gradually losing sight of the main line.1958 July, P. J. Norris, “The Bexhill West Branch”, in Railway Magazine, page 496:
- For this purpose, we inserted a heart-shaped cartilage implant, curved toward the caruncula.1982, Sherrell J. Aston, Albert Hornblass, Murray A. Meltzer, et al., editors, Third International Symposium of Plastic and Reconstructive...
Forms of curve
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| alternative pronunciation-spelling | cuhve |
| Noun | |
| plural | curves |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | curves |
| present participle | curving |
| past participle | curved |
| past | curved |
Origin of curve
Attested since the 1690s, from Latin curvus (“bent, curved”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to bend, curve, turn”) + *-wós. Doublet of curb, shrink, carcer, and cancer.
Words formed from curve
- above the curve
- aerocurve
- ahead of the curve
- algebraic curve
- Allen curve
- bathtub curve
- battleship curve
- battleship-shaped curve
- bean curve
- behind the curve
- bell curve
- bell curve god
- Bethe-Slater curve
- Beveridge curve
- Bézier curve
- blancmange curve
- blind curve
- caustic curve
- closed curve
- closed timelike curve
- cocked hat curve
- compound curve
- concentration-time curve
- contract curve
- cosine curve
- countercurve
- counter curve
- cubic curve
- curvaceous
- curveball
- curve-billed thrasher
- curve-billed tinamou
- curve deficiency
- curve flattening
- curveless
- curvelet
- curve of pursuit
- curvesome
- curvilinear
- curvimeter
- curvy
- deltoid curve
- demand curve
- de Rham curve
- distribution curve
- dragon curve
- duck curve
- dumbbell curve
- Edwards curve
- eigencurve
- elliptic curve
- elliptic-curve cryptography
- Engel curve
- epi curve
- epicurve
- epidemic curve
- epidemiological curve
- equidistant curve
- fatten the curve
- Fermat curve
Phrases with curve
- J curve
- Frey curve
- Lamé curve
- open curve
- Page curve
- Rahn curve
- rose curve
- sail curve
- sine curve
- skew curve
- time curve
- light curve
71 more phrasesFewer phrases
- offer curve
- Peano curve
- pedal curve
- plane curve
- space curve
- yield curve
- French curve
- Gosper curve
- Jordan curve
- Laffer curve
- Lorenz curve
- Pareto curve
- radial curve
- simple curve
- single curve
- supply curve
- Takagi curve
- foliate curve
- hairpin curve
- Hilbert curve
- Hubbert curve
- Keeling curve
- Kuznets curve
- pursuit curve
- reverse curve
- throw a curve
- Gaussian curve
- Gompertz curve
- L-shaped curve
- learning curve
- logistic curve
- Phillips curve
- rotation curve
- velocity curve
- bell curve gods
- horseshoe curve
- Lissajous curve
- nonsimple curve
- snowflake curve
- spherical curve
- grade on a curve
- logocyclic curve
- Sierpinski curve
- traveltime curve
- tricuspoid curve
- curve flattenings
- fattens the curve
- flatten the curve
- graded on a curve
- grades on a curve
- tautochrone curve
- curve deficiencies
- fattened the curve
- flattens the curve
- grading on a curve
- Great Gatsby curve
- hockey stick curve
- indifference curve
- spacefilling curve
- fattening the curve
- flattened the curve
- space-filling curve
- flattening the curve
- Hellings-Downs curve
- Jordan curve theorem
- throw someone a curve
- composite Bézier curve
- Kochanek-Bartels curve
- Harnack's curve theorem
- Hellings and Downs curve
- production possibility curve
Words that rhyme with curve
9 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about curve
- What does curve mean?
- Curve means bent without angles; crooked; curved.
- What is curve in Hindi?
- Curve in Hindi is चक्कर (cakkar), घुमाव (ghumāv), मोड़ना (moṛnā). See Curve meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use curve in a sentence?
- Its horns are smooth, rounded and form a curve backwards over the neck.
- What part of speech is curve?
- Curve can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce curve?
- Curve is pronounced /kɜːv/ (UK).
Words near curve in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: curve (page history and authors); curve (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); curve (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); നതി (Malayalam) (page history and authors); curve (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); curve (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ચક્કર (Gujarati) (page history and authors); curve (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); চকৰ (Assamese) (page history and authors); curve (Nepali, 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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Back ache-curve.wav, en-us-curve.ogg.
Cite this entry: “curve.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/curve. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.