Word.ws English Dictionary

flatten the curve

flatten the curve verb: to reduce the rate at which an infection spreads during an epidemic, decreasing the number of active cases at any given time by increasing the period of time over which numbers of similar cases occur.

flatten the curve: to reduce the rate at which an infection spreads during an epidemic, decreasing the number of...
Image: RCraig09, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

flatten the curve (third-person singular simple present flattens the curve, present participle flattening the curve, simple past and past participle flattened the curve)

  1. (colloquial) To reduce the rate at which an infection spreads during an epidemic, decreasing the number of active cases at any given time by increasing the period of time over which numbers of similar cases occur.
    • It is possible that these measures could have started to flatten the curve of deaths before the effects of the wider lockdown were visible.2020 April 6, Robert Cuffe, Christine Jeavans, “Coronavirus: When will we know if the UK lockdown is working?”, in BBC News

flatten the curve meaning in Malay and Vietnamese

flatten the curve in Malay

to reduce the rate at which an infection spreads during an epidemic
datarkan keluk, landaikan keluk

flatten the curve in Vietnamese

to reduce the rate at which an infection spreads during an epidemic
san phẳng đường cong

Forms of flatten the curve

third-person singular presentflattens the curve
present participleflattening the curve
past participleflattened the curve
pastflattened the curve

Questions about flatten the curve

What does flatten the curve mean?
Flatten the curve means to reduce the rate at which an infection spreads during an epidemic, decreasing the number of active cases at any given time by increasing the period of time over which numbers of similar cases occur.
What is flatten the curve in Malay?
Flatten the curve in Malay is datarkan keluk, landaikan keluk. See Flatten the curve meaning in Malay.
What part of speech is flatten the curve?
Flatten the curve is a verb.
What is the past tense of flatten the curve?
The past tense of flatten the curve is flattened the curve.

Words near flatten the curve in the dictionary

  1. flatted fifths
  2. flatted out
  3. flatten
  4. flatten down
  5. flatten out
  6. flatten the curve
  7. flattenability
  8. flattenable
  9. flattened
  10. flattened devicetree
  11. flattened down

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flatten the curve (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: “flatten the curve.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flatten_the_curve. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.