/kɜːv/, [ˈkʰɜːv], /kɚv/
OriginAttested 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.
- obsoleteBent without angles; crooked; curved.
“a curve line”
“a curve surface”
- A gentle 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 th”
“In appearance, the bharal resembles both a sheep and a goat. Its horns are smooth, rounded and form a curve backwards over the neck. The fur is brownish grey in colour which attains a slaty grey hue i”
- 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 f”
- 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.”
- broadly, nonstandardA grading system where all raw scores are raised by a set amount of points.
- analyticA 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.
- informal, plural-normallyThe attractive shape of a woman's body.
- transitiveTo bend; to crook.
“to curve a line”
“to curve a pipe”
- transitiveTo cause to swerve from a straight course.
“to curve a ball in pitching it”
- intransitiveTo 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; [”
“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.”
- transitiveTo grade on a curve (bell curve of a normal distribution).
“The teacher will curve the test.”
- slang, transitiveTo reject, to turn down romantic advances.
“I was once curved three times by the same woman.”
Formscurves(plural) · curves(present, singular, third-person) · curving(participle, present) · curved(participle, past) · curved(past)