Curl

How to spell curl

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce curl

What does curl mean?

1. verbTo form or cause to form into a curved, coiled, or spiral shape.
2. nounA coiled or spiral shape, especially a lock of hair that twists into a ring.

Curl in a sentence

• verb

  The cat likes to curl up beside the warm radiator.

• noun

  A single curl of hair fell loose across her forehead.

• verb

  Damp weather can curl the edges of a printed photograph.

• noun

  The gift ribbon ended in a tight curl at the bottom.

Where does curl come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Curl traces back to Middle English, where the adjective 'crulle' meant 'curly' and probably came from an unrecorded Old English form related to the Middle Dutch 'krul', meaning a curl or twist of hair. The whole family sits in the Germanic group of languages, where words built on a 'kr-' cluster repeatedly carry the idea of bending, coiling, or twisting. By a process called metathesis, the older 'crul' sound flipped its letters and settled into the modern 'curl' arrangement, which is why the spelling no longer matches its earliest form. From the fourteenth century onward it served first to describe ringlets of hair and then, more broadly, anything that bends into a rounded or spiral shape. The same coiling sense later gave English the sport of curling, named for the curving path the polished stone takes across the ice.

How the word is built

• curl (single root, from Middle English crulle: curly, twisted)