Curse
nounAn appeal to a supernatural power to bring harm or misfortune on someone, or the misfortune itself.
How to spell curse
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce curse
What does curse mean?
- nounAn appeal to a supernatural power to bring harm or misfortune on someone, or the misfortune itself.
- verbTo use offensive language, or to wish harm upon someone.
Curse in a sentence
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noun
The old story claimed a curse hung over the abandoned house.
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verb
He tried not to curse in front of the children.
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noun
She joked that bad weather on every holiday felt like a curse.
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verb
She would curse under her breath whenever the printer jammed.
Where does curse come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Curse comes from the Old English noun curs, meaning a prayer or invocation that harm or evil should fall upon someone, together with the matching verb cursian, 'to wish evil upon'. What is striking is that its deeper origin is genuinely obscure: unlike most core English words it has no clear cousins in the other early Germanic languages, which has long puzzled scholars. One popular suggestion links it to the Latin cursus, 'a running' or 'a course', through the idea of a set form of words run through in a religious ceremony, but this remains unproven. From its early religious and supernatural sense the word broadened over the centuries to cover ordinary bad language and, more loosely, anything that brings persistent misfortune. The spelling has stayed close to the Old English form, and the soft -se ending after the 'r' is the only real trap, since the sound alone might tempt a writer toward 'curce' or 'kurse'.
How the word is built
- curse (from Old English curs: an invocation of harm; not analysable into smaller English parts)
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