| Library / English Dictionary |
CURIOUS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Eager to investigate and learn or learn more (sometimes about others' concerns)
Example:
curious about the neighbor's doings
Classified under:
Similar:
inquisitive; questioning; speculative; wondering (showing curiosity)
nosey; nosy; prying; snoopy (offensively curious or inquisitive)
overcurious (showing excessive curiosity)
Also:
inquiring (given to inquiry)
interested (having or showing interest; especially curiosity or fascination or concern)
Antonym:
incurious (showing absence of intellectual inquisitiveness or natural curiosity)
Derivation:
curiosity (a state in which you want to learn more about something)
curiousness (a state of active curiosity)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Beyond or deviating from the usual or expected
Example:
singular behavior
Synonyms:
curious; funny; odd; peculiar; queer; rum; rummy; singular
Classified under:
Similar:
strange; unusual (being definitely out of the ordinary and unexpected; slightly odd or even a bit weird)
Derivation:
curiosity (something unusual -- perhaps worthy of collecting)
curiousness (the quality of being alien or not native)
Context examples:
To satisfy my curious reader, it may be sufficient to describe Lorbrulgrud.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Now the host had three daughters, who saw the goose and were curious to know what such a wonderful bird might be, and would have liked to have one of its golden feathers.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
Months afterwards a curious newspaper cutting reached us from Buda-Pesth.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He caught her curious and speculative eyes fixed on his hands, and, being in explanatory mood, he said:-
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
As a note to those readers who are curious: in the US, the eclipse will fall on December 25 and later, on December 26, in countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Australia.
(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)
The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious series of entries.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
"It is no doubt a curious formation," said I "but I am not geologist enough to say that it is wonderful."
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It is very curious and complex, Watson.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
You have a curious, designing mind, Mr. Rochester.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
"If that's the way he's going to grow up, I wish he'd stay a boy," she thought, with a curious sense of disappointment and discomfort, trying meantime to seem quite easy and gay.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
