different between curious vs prying
curious
English
Etymology 1
From Middle English curious (“careful, meticulous; ingenious, skilful; expert, learned; concerned about (something); eager; curious, inquisitive; prying; carefully or skilfully made; exquisite, fine; sophisticated; recondite; magic or occult; absorbing, painstaking”) [and other forms], from Old French curios, curius (modern French curieux (“curious, inquisitive; interesting, quaint, unusual”)), and its etymon Latin c?ri?sus (“careful; complicated, elaborate; careworn; curious, inquisitive; meddlesome, prying”), from c?ra (“care, concern; anxiety; sorrow; attention; administration, management; command, office; guardianship”) (from Proto-Indo-European *k?eys- (“to heed”)) + -?sus (suffix meaning ‘full of, prone to’ forming adjectives from nouns). The English word is cognate with Italian curioso (“curious, inquisitive”), Occitan curios, Portuguese curioso (“curious, inquisitive; odd, out of the ordinary”), Spanish curioso (“curious, inquisitive; interesting; odd, strange; quaint”).
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /?kj??.?i.?s/, /?kj??-/
- (General American) IPA(key): /?kj?.?i.?s/, /?kj?.i.?s/
- Rhymes: -???i?s
- Hyphenation: cu?ri?ous
Adjective
curious (comparative more curious or curiouser, superlative most curious or curiousest)
- Tending to ask questions, or to want to explore or investigate; inquisitive; (with a negative connotation) nosy, prying.
- Synonyms: enquiring, inquiring; (obsolete) exquisitive; investigative; (rare) peery
- Antonyms: incurious, noncurious, uncurious
- Caused by curiosity.
- Leading one to ask questions about; somewhat odd, out of the ordinary, or unusual.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:strange
- Antonym: uncurious
- (obsolete) Careful, fastidious, particular; (specifically) demanding a high standard of excellence, difficult to satisfy.
- (obsolete) Carefully or artfully constructed; made with great elegance or skill.
Usage notes
The comparative and superlative forms curiouser and curiousest are regarded as informal or nonstandard.
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
Etymology 2
curi(um) +? -ous
Adjective
curious (not comparable)
- (chemistry, rare) Containing or pertaining to trivalent curium.
References
Further reading
- curiosity on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
- curious (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
curious From the web:
- what curious mean
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- what curious george character are you
- what curious toddlers do crossword
- what curious episode occurs in the study
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prying
English
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /?p?a?.??/
Verb
prying
- present participle of pry
Noun
prying (plural pryings)
- The act of one who pries.
- 1992, Judith Jarvis Thomson, The Realm of Rights (page 280)
- That it is wrongful to do a thing in that it is grubby in the way in which pryings for the sake of prurient interest are grubby, does not by itself make doing the thing an infringement of a claim.
- 1992, Judith Jarvis Thomson, The Realm of Rights (page 280)
Anagrams
- Pingry
prying From the web:
- what prying mean
- what does prying mean
- what is prying force
- what is prying action
- what does prying eyes mean
- what is prying eyes
- what do praying mantis eat
- what are prying questions
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