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Curious   /kjˈʊriəs/   Listen
adjective
Curious  adj.  
1.
Difficult to please or satisfy; solicitous to be correct; careful; scrupulous; nice; exact. (Obs.) "Little curious in her clothes." "How shall we, If he be curious, work upon his faith?"
2.
Exhibiting care or nicety; artfully constructed; elaborate; wrought with elegance or skill. "To devise curious works." "His body couched in a curious bed."
3.
Careful or anxious to learn; eager for knowledge; given to research or inquiry; habitually inquisitive; prying; sometimes with after or of. "It is a pity a gentleman so very curious after things that were elegant and beautiful should not have been as curious as to their origin, their uses, and their natural history."
4.
Exciting attention or inquiry; awakening surprise; inviting and rewarding inquisitiveness; not simple or plain; strange; rare. "Acurious tale" "A multitude of curious analogies." "Many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore." "Abstruse investigations in recondite branches of learning or sciense often bring to light curious results."
Curious arts, magic. (Obs.) "Many... which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them."
Synonyms: Inquisitive; prying. See Inquisitive.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Curious" Quotes from Famous Books



... published by Mr. Noble. Had Johnson been furnished with the materials which the industry of that gentleman has procured, and with others which, it it is believed, are yet preserved in manuscript, he would, without doubt, have produced a most valuable and curious ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... packet sealed with six seals, on which a similar inscription was written. In this were twenty-seven pieces of paper on each of which was written: 'Sundry curious secrets.' ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... well suited to the intelligence of her face, with its thin lips, and eyes of a piercing black, undimmed by age. Those eyes made me uncomfortable, in spite of my gayety, as they followed my every movement with curious scrutiny. Still I was very merry and gay; my sisters even wondered at my ever-ready mirth, which was almost wild in its excess. I have heard since then of the Scottish belief that those doomed to some great calamity become fey, and are never so disposed for merriment and laughter as just before ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... a critical and trying change, and "The Light under the Altar" case had ploughed him deeply. It was curious that his doubts always seemed to have a double strand; there was a moral objection based on the church's practical futility and an intellectual strand subordinated to this which traced that futility largely to its ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... laughed. "Begorra! what would I be afraid of, in such a ship as this, wid all those beautiful guns and what not to purtect us? No, Leigh, it's not afraid I am, as you know well; and yet I have a curious feelin'—I can't describe ut, but it's a sort of feelin' of—Howly Sailor!—what in the nation is that? Did ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood


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