Curses

How to spell curses

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce curses

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does curses mean?

1. nounSpoken appeals or spells intended to bring harm or misfortune on someone.
2. verbSwears angrily or calls down harm; used with he, she, or it.

Curses in a sentence

• noun

  The old legend warned of ancient curses guarding the tomb.

• verb

  He curses under his breath every time the printer jams.

• noun

  The villagers blamed their bad harvest on a series of curses.

• verb

  She quietly curses the heavy traffic on her morning commute.

Where does curses come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word curse comes from the late Old English noun 'curs', meaning a prayer or invocation calling down evil or harm on someone. Its ultimate origin is genuinely uncertain, which is unusual for such an old and common word; scholars have proposed a link to the Latin 'cursus' (a course or running, in the sense of a set liturgical formula) but none of the suggestions is firmly proven. By the medieval period the noun had grown a matching verb, 'to curse', meaning both to swear angrily and to formally condemn, as when the church pronounced a religious curse. The plural and present-tense form 'curses' simply adds the regular -s ending, and because the root ends in a soft sound the spelling stays neat and phonetic. Despite its dark meaning, the word has no exotic spelling trap; the only thing to remember is the single s in the stem before the plural -es.

How the word is built

• curse (Old English curs: a calling down of harm)
• -s (plural noun / third-person singular verb)