Curry

How to spell curry

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce curry

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does curry mean?

1. nounA dish of meat, fish, or vegetables cooked in a spiced sauce, associated with South Asian cooking.
2. verbTo prepare or flavour food with a spiced sauce of this kind.

Curry in a sentence

• noun

  She ordered a mild curry with rice and warm naan.

• verb

  You can curry the leftover lamb for tomorrow's dinner.

• noun

  The restaurant is known for its rich vegetable curry.

• verb

  The chef likes to curry fresh vegetables with coconut milk.

Where does curry come from?

Language of origin: Other

This is really two different words that fell together as one spelling. The familiar food sense comes from the Tamil word kari, which meant a sauce or relish eaten with rice, and it reached English in the late 1500s through Portuguese and British contact with southern India, where it broadened to cover the whole spiced dish. The quite separate verb, as in to curry a horse, descends from the Old French conreer or correier, meaning to prepare, arrange, or make ready, which is also the root of the grooming tool called a currycomb. That same French verb gives us the curious phrase to curry favour, originally to curry favel, where favel was a chestnut horse in a medieval fable that stood for cunning, so flattering someone was likened to rubbing down the deceitful horse. The double r is the spelling trap, and it simply preserves the short, stressed first syllable in both origins. Today the food sense overwhelmingly dominates everyday use.

How the word is built

• From Tamil kari (sauce, relish); the grooming verb is a separate word from Old French conreer (to prepare, arrange)