Word.ws English Dictionary

flattens the curve

flattens the curve is the present of flatten the curve.

Meaning of flatten the curve

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

Questions about flattens the curve

What is flattens the curve the present of?
Flattens the curve is the present of flatten the curve.

Words near flattens the curve in the dictionary

  1. flattening the curve
  2. flattenings
  3. flattens
  4. flattens down
  5. flattens out
  6. flattens the curve
  7. flatter
  8. flatter oneself
  9. flatter to deceive
  10. flatter-chested
  11. flatterable

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flattens the curve (page history and authors); 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: “flattens the curve.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flattens_the_curve. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.