Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A line that deviates from straightness in a smooth, continuous fashion.
- noun A surface that deviates from planarity in a smooth, continuous fashion.
- noun Something characterized by such a line or surface, especially a rounded line or contour of the human body.
- noun A relatively smooth bend in a road or other course.
- noun A line representing data on a graph.
- noun A trend derived from or as if from such a graph.
- noun A graphic representation showing the relative performance of individuals as measured against each other, used especially as a method of grading students in which the assignment of grades is based on predetermined proportions of students.
- noun The graph of a function on a coordinate plane.
- noun The intersection of two surfaces in three dimensions.
- noun The graph of the solutions to any equation of two variables.
- noun Baseball A curve ball.
- noun Slang Something that is unexpected or designed to trick or deceive.
- intransitive verb To move in or take the shape of a curve.
- intransitive verb To cause to curve.
- intransitive verb Baseball To pitch (a ball) with a curve.
- intransitive verb To grade (students, for example) on a curve.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To bend; cause to take the shape of a curve; crook; inflect.
- To have or assume a curved or flexed form: as, to
curve inward. - Bending; crooked; curved.
- noun A continuous bending; a flexure without angles; usually, as a concrete noun, a one-way geometrical locus which may be conceived as described by a point moving along a line round which as axis turns a plane, while the line rotates in the plane round the point.
- noun Anything continuously bent.
- noun A draftsman's instrument for forming curved figures.
- noun In base-ball, the course of a ball so pitched that it does not pass in a straight line from the pitcher to the catcher, but makes a deflection in the air other than the ordinary one caused by the force of gravity: as, it was difficult to gage the curves of the pitcher.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Bent without angles; crooked; curved.
- intransitive verb To bend or turn gradually from a given direction.
- noun A bending without angles; that which is bent; a flexure.
- noun (Geom.) A line described according to some low, and having no finite portion of it a straight line.
- noun See under
Axis . - noun See
Brachystochrone . - noun (Math.) the process of determining the shape, location, singular points, and other peculiarities of a curve from its equation.
- noun (Geom.) a curve such that when a plane passes through three points of the curve, it passes through all the other points of the curve. Any other curve is called a
curve of double curvature , or atwisted curve . - transitive verb To bend; to crook; ; to cause to swerve from a straight course.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective obsolete Bent without angles; crooked; curved.
- noun A gentle
bend , such as in a road. - noun A simple figure containing no
straight portions and noangles ; acurved line . - noun A grading system based on the scale of performance of a group used to
normalize a right-skewed grade distribution (with more lower scores) into abell curve , so that more can receive higher grades, regardless of their actual knowledge of the subject. - noun analytic geometry A continuous map from a one-
dimensional space to a multidimensional space. - noun geometry A one-dimensional figure of
non-zero length; thegraph of a continuous map from a one-dimensional space. - noun algebraic geometry An algebraic curve; a
polynomial relation of the planar coordinates. - noun topology A one-dimensional
continuum . - noun informal The attractive shape of a woman's body.
- verb transitive To bend; to crook.
- verb transitive To cause to swerve from a straight course.
- verb intransitive To bend or turn gradually from a given direction.
- verb To
grade on a curve (bell curve of anormal distribution ).
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a line on a graph representing data
- verb bend or cause to bend
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word curve.
Examples
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If you delay, then the stimulus might not start to work until the curve is already headed back up.
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The continuance of the curve is a narrow, unrailed bridge.
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And in the middle of the curve is a nook about five-and-a-half feet tall, a bit more than two feet wide and a foot deep.
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And then for others the curve is anything but bell-shaped.
My Bacon Number is 3 frankwu 2007
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Actually the curve is an exponential so every point over 100 counts more and more.
EXTRALIFE – By Scott Johnson - Great Homer Pentium ad from a few years back. 2006
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The continuance of the curve is a narrow, unrailed bridge.
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The continuance of the curve is a narrow, unrailed bridge.
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Apply a label curve style to your conduit preferences.
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He has urged what he calls curve shifting, an overhaul of human behavior toward healthier living.
NYT > Home Page By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS 2010
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The menu is under Format / Style Manager. go into Documentation Objects / Property Set Definitions / Check if you have a type you need otherwise create your own. then attach a label curve to your drawing from the pallette and select the property set you want to attach.
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To curve someone is to respond to texts, but in a way that suggests you’d really rather end the conversation.
Curving Is The Latest Trend To Make Your Dating Life Totally Miserable Brittany Wong 2018
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The duck curve—named after its resemblance to a duck—shows the difference in electricity demand and the amount of available solar energy throughout the day.
Confronting the Duck Curve: How to Address Over-Generation of Solar Energy 2023
scarequotes commented on the word curve
http://www.today.com/style/forget-plus-size-models-have-chosen-new-word-describe-their-t60441
While these new models are not the standard size 0 or 2 that we often see gracing the catwalk, they are not going to let the size of their clothing define them. Instead, they're trying to change the way the fashion industry (and the rest of the world) sees them, with the term "curve" — which describes the shape of their body, not just their waistline.
The movement recently came into the spotlight after 18-year-old model Jordyn Woods, a newcomer to the modeling scene, was featured in an interview on TeenVogue.com in which she referred to herself as a "curve model" rather than the more common industry term, "plus-size."
December 9, 2015