Word.ws English Dictionary

sweater curse

sweater curse noun: a superstition among knitters that making a sweater for a romantic partner increases the likelihood of a breakup.

Noun (1)

sweater curse (uncountable)

  1. A superstition among knitters that making a sweater for a romantic partner increases the likelihood of a breakup.
    • At the time, Petteys didn‘t know about the boyfriend sweater curse, one of those bits of knitterly lore that gets handed down through the generations.2010 March 23, Adrienne Martini, “March: Acquisitions, or You Spent How Much on a Book?”, in Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously, Atria Books, →ISBN, page 25

Noun (2) capitalized: Sweater Curse

Sweater Curse (uncountable)

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of sweater curse
    • Even cooler: guys who knit can make their own sweaters, and you can avoid the Sweater Curse!2006, Shannon Okey, “3: Easy Does It”, in Knitgrrl 2: Learn to Knit with 16 All-new Patterns, Watson-Guptill Publications, Incorporated, →ISBN, page 35
    • What is widely known among us as the Sweater Curse is recognized as a superstition, but one which many personal accounts support.[2013 November 11, Alison Lurie, “The Supernatural Power of Knitting”, in Ann Hood, editor, Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting, W. W. Norton, →ISBN, page 183

Questions about sweater curse

What does sweater curse mean?
Sweater curse means a superstition among knitters that making a sweater for a romantic partner increases the likelihood of a breakup.
What part of speech is sweater curse?
Sweater curse is a noun.

Words near sweater curse in the dictionary

  1. sweatedst
  2. sweatee
  3. sweatees
  4. sweaten
  5. sweater
  6. sweater curse
  7. sweater dress
  8. sweater dresses
  9. sweater girl
  10. sweater girls
  11. sweater meat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sweater curse (page history and authors); Sweater Curse (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: “sweater curse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sweater_curse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.