What does "curious" mean?
Curious: Careful or anxious to learn; eager for knowledge; given to research or inquiry; habitually inquisitive; prying; -- sometimes with after or of. It is a picurious after things that were elegant and beatiful should not have been as curious as to their origin, their uses, and their natural history. Woodward.
Additional senses
- 2.Exciting attention or inquiry; awakening surprise; inviting and rewarding inquisitiveness; not simple or plain; strange; rare. "Acurious tale" Shak. A multitude of curious analogies. Mocaulay. Many a quaint and curiousvolume of forgotten lore. E. A. Poe. Abstruse investigations in recondite branches of learning or sciense often bring to light curious results. C. J. Smith. Curious arts, magic. [Obs.] Many . . . which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them. Acts xix.
- 3.See Inquisitive.
Sources
- Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain, via GCIDE / Project Gutenberg).
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- Published: 2026-07-17T00:00:00-07:00 · Modified: 2026-07-17T00:00:00-07:00