Word.ws English Dictionary

kuru

/ˈkʊ.ɹuː/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/ˈkʉː.ɹʉː/

kuru noun: a chronic, progressive, fatal central nervous system disease found mainly among the Fore and neighboring peoples of New Guinea, caused by a prion that probably resembles the scrapie agent of sheep, transmissible to nonhuman primates, and believed to be transmitted by ritual cannibalism.

Noun

kuru (uncountable)

  1. A chronic, progressive, fatal central nervous system disease found mainly among the Fore and neighboring peoples of New Guinea, caused by a prion that probably resembles the scrapie agent of sheep, transmissible to nonhuman primates, and believed to be transmitted by ritual cannibalism.
    • By the late 1950s, kuru was the leading cause of death among Fore women, and it had killed so many that men outnumbered women by three to one.1999, Matt Ridley, Genome, Harper Perennial, published 2004, page 273

Proper noun capitalized: Kuru

Kuru

  1. (Hinduism, historical) an ancient kingdom, mentioned in the Mahabharata.

kuru meaning in Tamil and Sanskrit

kuru in Tamil

தேசம், வாரம்

kuru in Sanskrit

Kuru, ancestor of both the Pandavas and the Kauravas in the Mahabharata
कुरु kúru

Synonyms of kuru

Origin of kuru

From Fore kúru (literally “trembling, shivering”). Perhaps eventually from Proto-Gorokan *kút(V) (“dangling, shaking”) if cognate with the reduplicated element of Yagaria gúli gúli hu- (“be loose, rattle”).

Borrowed from Sanskrit कुरु (kuru).

Phrases with kuru

Questions about kuru

What does kuru mean?
Kuru means a chronic, progressive, fatal central nervous system disease found mainly among the Fore and neighboring peoples of New Guinea, caused by a prion that probably resembles the scrapie agent of sheep, transmissible to nonhuman primates, and believed to be transmitted by ritual cannibalism.
What is kuru in Tamil?
Kuru in Tamil is தேசம், வாரம். See Kuru meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is kuru?
Kuru can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce kuru?
Kuru is pronounced /ˈkʉː.ɹʉː/ (Australia).

Words near kuru in the dictionary

  1. Kurtzes
  2. Kurtzian
  3. Kurtzman
  4. Kurtzmans
  5. Kurtöp
  6. kuru
  7. Kuru disease
  8. Kuruba
  9. Kurubas
  10. kuruc
  11. kurucs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kuru (page history and authors); Kuru (page history and authors); kuru (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); कुरु (Sanskrit) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-kuru.wav.

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