curry

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) enPR: kŭrʹē, IPA^(key): /ˈkʌɹ.i/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkʌɹ.i/, /ˈkɝ.i/

  • Audio (US)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌɹi

Etymology 1

1747 (as currey, first published recipe for the dish in English), from Tamil கறி (kaṟi), influenced by existing Middle English cury (“cooking”), from Middle French cuyre (“to cook”) (from which also cuisine), from Vulgar Latin cocere, from Latin coquere, present active infinitive of coquō.

Earlier cury found in 1390 cookbook Forme of Cury (Forms of Cooking) by court chefs of Richard II of England.

Alternative forms

• currey (obsolete)
• currie (archaic)

Noun

curry (countable and uncountable, plural curries)

1. One of a family of dishes originating from Indian cuisine, flavoured by a spiced sauce

   Synonym: (rhyming slang) Ruby Murray

2. A spiced sauce or relish, especially one flavoured with curry powder
3. Curry powder

   Synonym: curry powder

4. (incel slang, derogatory) An Indian
5. (piracy slang) someone who begs for invite for private trackers on /ptg/(private tracker general) of 4chan

Derived terms

Descendants

• → Chinese: 咖哩
• → Czech: kari
• → Danish: karry
  • → Icelandic: karrí
• → Dutch: kerrie
• → Irish: curaí
• → Japanese: カレー (karē)
  • → Korean: 카레 (kare)
  • → Marshallese: kare
• → Korean: 커리 (keori)
• → Scottish Gaelic: coiridh
• → Russian: ка́рри (kárri)
• → Slovak: karí
• → Swedish: kurry
• → Turkish: köri
• → Vietnamese: cà ri

Translations

See also

• piccalilli

Verb

curry (third-person singular simple present curries, present participle currying, simple past and past participle curried)

1. (transitive) To cook or season with curry powder.

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English currayen, from Old French correer (“to prepare”), presumably from Vulgar Latin *conredare, from Latin com- (a form of con- (“with; together”)) + a verb derived from Proto-Germanic *raidaz. More at ready.

Verb

curry (third-person singular simple present curries, present participle currying, simple past and past participle curried)

2. (transitive) To groom (a horse); to dress or rub down a horse with a curry comb.
   • 1610–1614, John Fletcher, “The Tragedie of Valentinian”, in Comedies and Tragedies , London: Humphrey Robinson, , and for Humphrey Moseley , published 1647, →OCLC, Act II, scene i:

     Your short horse is soon curried.

   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XI, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     One day I was out in the barn and he drifted in. I was currying the horse and he set down on the wheelbarrow and begun to ask questions.

3. (transitive) To dress (leather) after it is tanned by beating, rubbing, scraping and colouring.
4. (transitive) To beat, thrash; to drub.
   • c. 1619–1621, John Fletcher, “The Island Princesse”, in Comedies and Tragedies , London: Humphrey Robinson, , and for Humphrey Moseley , published 1647, →OCLC, Act IV, scene ii:

     I have seen him curry a fellow's carcase handsomely.

   • 1662, [Samuel Butler], “”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. , London: John Martyn and Henry Herringman, , published 1678, →OCLC; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge: University Press, 1905, →OCLC, canto I:

     […] By setting brother against brother / To claw and curry one another.

5. (transitive, figurative) To try to win or gain (favour) by flattering.
   • 2014 August 27, Stephanie Zacharek, “The Last of Robin Hood Wrestles with a Star's Underage Love”, in The Village Voice‎, archived from the original on 2014-09-03:

     A middle-aged woman waves and calls to her, as if she, like the hungry reporters, were currying the girl's favor: Florence Aadland (Sarandon, in a wily, multilayered performance), Beverly's mother, wears an expression of maternal concern, though her self-serving motives become increasingly clear.

Usage notes

The sense "to win or gain favour" is most frequently used in the phrases to curry favour (with) and to curry favour.

Derived terms

• curry favor

Translations

Etymology 3

Named after American mathematician Haskell Curry.

Verb

curry (third-person singular simple present curries, present participle currying, simple past and past participle curried)

1. (transitive, computing) To perform currying upon.
   • 2011, Zachary Kessin, Programming HTML5 Applications: Building Powerful Cross-Platform Environments in JavaScript, "O'Reilly Media, Inc.", →ISBN, page 21:

     The easiest way to curry parameters is to create a function that takes a parameter block and returns a function that will call the original function with the presupplied parameters as defaults […] .

   • 2015, Leonardo Borges, Clojure Reactive Programming, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 194:

     Next, we curry the avg function to 3 arguments and put it into an option.

Translations

Etymology 4

Possibly derived from currier, a common 16th- to 18th-century form of courier, as if to ride post, to post. Possibly influenced by scurry.

Verb

curry (third-person singular simple present curries, present participle currying, simple past and past participle curried)

1. (intransitive, obsolete) To scurry; to ride or run hastily
2. (transitive, obsolete) To cover (a distance); (of a projectile) to traverse (its range).
   • 1608, George Chapman, The Conspiracie, and Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron, section 2.245:

     I am not hee that can ... by midnight leape my horse, curry seauen miles.

   • 1662, Thomas Salusbury, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogue Two)

     All these shots shall curry or finish their ranges in times equal to each other.

3. (transitive, obsolete) To hurry.
   • 1676, Andrew Marvell, Mr. Smirke, section 34:

     A sermon is soon curryed over.

Etymology 5

Noun

curry (plural curries)

1. Obsolete form of quarry.

Further reading

• curry on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “curry”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.

References

Basque

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kuri/
• Rhymes: -uri

Noun

curry inan

1. curry powder
2. curry dish

Declension

Further reading

• "curry" in Euskaltzaindiaren Hiztegia , euskaltzaindia.eus

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from English curry.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkʏ.ri/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: cur‧ry
• Rhymes: -ʏri

Noun

curry m (plural curry's, diminutive curry'tje n)

1. the spicy condiment curry powder

   Synonyms: kerrie, kerriepoeder

2. a curry dish

   Synonym: kerrieschotel

3. curry ketchup

   Synonym: curryketchup

Derived terms

Finnish

Alternative forms

• karri

Etymology

Borrowed from English curry, itself from Tamil கறி (kaṟi).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɑrːi/,
• Rhymes: -ɑrːi
• Syllabification^(key): cur‧ry

Noun

curry

1. curry, curry powder (south Asian spice mix)
2. curry (a dish made using this spice mixture)

Declension

Derived terms

Further reading

• “curry”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎ (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2023-07-02

French

Etymology

Borrowed into Middle French from multiple sources including English curry, all ultimately derived from Tamil கறி (kaṟi).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ky.ʁi/

• audio

  (file)

Noun

curry m (plural currys)

1. curry

   Synonym: cari

Further reading

• “curry”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.

Italian

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English curry.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɛr.ri/, /ˈkar.ri/
• Rhymes: -ɛrri, -arri

Noun

curry m (invariable)

1. curry; curry powder

Polish

Polish Wikipedia has an article on:

curry

Wikipedia ^pl

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English curry, from Tamil கறி (kaṟi).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈka.rɨ/

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -arɨ
• Syllabification: cu‧rry
• Homophone: kary

Noun

curry n (indeclinable)

1. curry (dish)
2. curry powder

Further reading

• curry in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• curry in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Portuguese

Pronunciation

Noun

curry m (uncountable)

1. (Brazil) curry powder (mixture of spices used in Asian cooking)

   Synonym: caril

2. (Brazil) curry (dish made with curry powder)

Romanian

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from French curry, from English curry, from Tamil கறி (kaṟi).

Noun

curry m (uncountable)

1. curry powder (mixture of spices)
2. curry (dish)

Spanish

Alternative forms

• curri

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English curry.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkuri/
• Rhymes: -uri
• Syllabification: cu‧rry

Noun

curry m (plural currys)

1. curry

Usage notes

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.

Further reading

• “curry”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014

Swedish

Pronunciation

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

curry c (uncountable)

1. curry powder

Declension

Derived terms

• currypasta (“curry paste”)

References

• curry in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• curry in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• curry in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)