curate

Borrowed from Medieval Latin cūrātus (“one who has been curated, a curate”), from the past passive participle of Latin cūrō. Doublet of curato and curé. Equivalent to cure +‎ -ate (noun-forming suffix).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkjʊəɹət/, /-ɹɪt/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American) enPR: kjo͝oʹrĭt, IPA^(key): /ˈkjʊɹɪt/
• Rhymes: (Received Pronunciation) -ʊəɹət

curate (plural curates)

1. An assistant rector or vicar.

   Hypernym: cleric

   Coordinate terms: abbé, deacon; canon; priest, reverend, pastor, rector, vicar

2. A parish priest.

   Hypernym: cleric

3. (Ireland) An assistant barman.
   • 1904–1907 (date written), James Joyce, “Counterparts”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards, published June 1914, →OCLC, page 107:

     “Here, Pat, give us a g.p., like a good fellow.” The curate brought him a glass of plain porter. The man drank it at a gulp and asked for a caraway seed. He put his penny on the counter and, leaving the curate to grope for it in the gloom, retreated out of the snug as furtively as he had entered it.

• → Welsh: curad

Back-formation from curator on the basis of -ate (verb-forming suffix).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /kjʊəˈɹeɪt/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American) enPR: kjo͝o-rātʹ, kjo͝oʹrāt, IPA^(key): /kjʊˈɹeɪt/, /ˈkjʊɹeɪt/
• Rhymes: -eɪt

curate (third-person singular simple present curates, present participle curating, simple past and past participle curated)

1. (transitive) To act as a curator for.

   She curated the traveling exhibition.

   They carefully curated the recovered artifacts.

2. (by extension, transitive) To apply selectivity and taste to, as a collection of fashion items or web pages.
   • 2007 May 16, “TV Networks Woo Advertisers with Fall Line-Up”, in NPR_TalkNation:

     What I love about DVRs is that they really allow you to curate your experience of television.

   • 2010 May, David Biespiel, “This Land Is Our Land”, in Poetry, volume 196, number 2, pages 151–158:

     During the past five years I had the good fortune to be editor of Poetry Northwest. The magazine's mission includes curating a dialogue between poetry, the other arts, and civic life.

   • 2010 November 28, Laura Compton, “Shopping sites redefine fashion”, in San Francisco Chronicle, Style, page G1:

     To grasp how this all works, think of the concepts of editing and curating, adopted from publishing and art but now used constantly in the fashion world to imply judgment, taste and discernment.

   • 2011 February, Seth Porges, “Digital Clinic”, in Popular Mechanics, volume 188, number 2, page 105:

     From there, click the Notifications tab and scroll down to Groups. This will bring up a page that allows you to curate what sort of Group-related activity results in e-mail alerts.

   • 2012 June 10, “TechBits: Fab lets you shop, if not sort”, in Washington Post:

     Sometimes, you just want to shop for the pure joy of looking at cool things. And the app for Fab, a curated shopping site, is just the place to do that.

   • 2014, Astra Taylor, chapter 3, in The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN:

     The line between reporter and reader will blur as a growing number of people create, curate, and circulate content.

   • 2015 April 18, David Balzer, “‘Reading lists, outfits, even salads are curated – it’s absurd’”, in The Guardian‎:

     Contemporary curating has become an absurdity. Outfits are curated. Salads are curated. Twitter feeds are curated. Bennington College in Vermont invites prospective students to curate their applications.

   • 2022 October 22, Maureen Dowd, “Ralph Fiennes, Master of Monsters”, in The New York Times‎:

     Unlike some top American actors, who carefully curate heroic roles, the British actor relishes swimming in moral murkiness, “the gray areas where you can’t easily put a definition.”

3. (intransitive) To work or act as a curator.

   Not only does he curate for the museum, he manages the office and fund-raises.

From cur(ium) +‎ -ate.

curate (plural curates)

1. (inorganic chemistry) An oxyanion of curium; any salt containing such an anion.

• curate on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• acture, acuter, cauter

• IPA^(key): /kuˈra.te/
• Rhymes: -ate
• Hyphenation: cu‧rà‧te

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

curate

1. feminine plural of curato

curate

1. inflection of curare:
   1. second-person plural present
   2. second-person plural imperative

• teucra

cūrāte

1. second-person plural present active imperative of cūrō

• “curate”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• curate in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

curate

1. second-person singular voseo imperative of curar combined with te