curry

• enPR: kŭrʹē
• IPA^(key): /ˈkʌ.ɹi/ (Received Pronunciation; US, without the hurry–furry merger)

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• (US, hurry–furry merger) IPA^(key): /kɝ.i/
• IPA^(key): /ˈkʊ.ɹi/ (Northern England)
• (South Asia) IPA^(key): /ˈkari/, (spelling pronunciation) /-ɾi/
• Rhymes: -ʌɹi

1747 (as currey, first published recipe for the dish in English^[1][2]), from Tamil கறி (kaṟi), influenced by existing Middle English cury (“cooking”),^[2] from Middle French cuyre (“to cook”) (whence also cuisine), from Vulgar Latin cocere, from Latin coquere.

Earlier cury found in 1390 cookbook Forme of Cury (Forms of Cooking) by court chefs of Richard II of England.

• currey (obsolete)
• currie (archaic)

curry (countable and uncountable, plural curries)

1. One of a family of dishes originating from Indian cuisine, flavored by a spiced sauce.

   Synonym: (rhyming slang) Ruby Murray

   beef curry;   vegetarian curry

   navy curry;   Yokosuka curry

2. A spiced sauce or relish, especially one flavored with curry powder.
3. Curry powder.

   Synonym: curry powder

4. (incel slang, derogatory, ethnic slur) A person of South Asian heritage.
   • 2020, Anthony Glyn Burton, "'I would do anything to not call this place home': The black pill, involuntary celibacy, and the neoliberal male grasp in digital incel communities", thesis submitted to Ryerson University & York University, pages 92-93:

     […] while another tells us that white women “are also THE most racist group of foids. they would rather put a bullet through their brain than date a curry or sandcel.”

   • 2020, Joshua A. Segalewitz, "'You Don’t Understand... It’s Not About Virginity': Sexual Markets, Identity Construction, and Violent Masculinity on an Incel Forum Board", thesis submitted to the University of Dayton, pages 29-30:

     For example, spicycurry says, “STOP THE COPE NOW. The only ones who should be complaining about race are us curries who are literally at the bottom of the pile.”

   • 2024, anonymous, quoted in Václav Báča, "Hierarchy at the Bottom of the Hierarchy: Involuntary Celibates, Identity, and Race", thesis submitted to Charles University, page 40:

     People get mixed up by thinking race is #1 because girls aren't going for asians and curries.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:curry.

• → Chinese: 咖哩
• → Czech: kari
• → Danish: karry
  • → Icelandic: karrí
• → Dutch: kerrie
• → Irish: curaí
• → Japanese: カレー (karē)
  • → Korean: 카레 (kare)
  • → Marshallese: kare
• → Korean: 커리 (keori)
• → Scottish Gaelic: coiridh
• → Russian: ка́рри (kárri)
• → Slovak: karí
• → Swedish: kurry
• → Turkish: köri
• → Vietnamese: cà ri

curry (third-person singular simple present curries, present participle currying, simple past and past participle curried)

1. (transitive) To cook or season with curry powder.

From Middle English currayen, from Old French correer (“to prepare”), presumably from Vulgar Latin *conredare, from Latin com- (a form of con- (“with; together”)) + a verb derived from Proto-Germanic *raidaz. More at ready.

curry (third-person singular simple present curries, present participle currying, simple past and past participle curried)

1. (transitive) To groom (a horse); to dress or rub down a horse with a curry comb.
   • 1610–1614, John Fletcher, “The Tragedie of Valentinian”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act II, scene i:

     Your short horse is soon curried.

   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XI, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     One day I was out in the barn and he drifted in. I was currying the horse and he set down on the wheelbarrow and begun to ask questions.

2. (transitive) To dress (leather) after it is tanned by beating, rubbing, scraping and colouring.
3. (transitive) To beat, thrash; to drub.
   • c. 1619–1621, John Fletcher, “The Island Princesse”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act IV, scene ii:

     I have seen him curry a fellow's carcase handsomely.

   • 1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]. Canto I.”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678, →OCLC; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, 1905, →OCLC:

     […] By setting brother against brother / To claw and curry one another.

4. (transitive, figurative) To try to win or gain (favour) by flattering.
   • 2014 August 27, Stephanie Zacharek, “The Last of Robin Hood Wrestles with a Star's Underage Love”, in The Village Voice‎^[2], archived from the original on 3 September 2014:

     A middle-aged woman waves and calls to her, as if she, like the hungry reporters, were currying the girl's favor: Florence Aadland (Sarandon, in a wily, multilayered performance), Beverly's mother, wears an expression of maternal concern, though her self-serving motives become increasingly clear.

• The sense to win or gain favor is most frequently used in the phrases to curry favor (with) and to curry [someone's] favor.

• curry favor

From Curry (a surname), named after the American computer scientist and mathematician Haskell Curry (1900–1982) who developed the technique based on earlier work by the German logician and mathematician Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) and the Germany-based Russian logician and mathematician Moses Schönfinkel (1888–1942). It is not known who coined the term.

curry (third-person singular simple present curries, present participle currying, simple past and past participle curried)

1. (transitive, computing) To perform currying (“the technique of converting a function that takes multiple arguments into a sequence of functions that each take a single argument”) on (a function, a parameter, etc.).
   • 2004, Yoshihito Toyama, “Termination of S-Expression Rewriting Systems: Lexicographic Path Ordering for Higher-Order Terms”, in Vincent van Oostrom, editor, Rewriting Techniques and Applications: 15th International Conference, RTA 2004, Aachen, Germany, June 3–5, 2004: Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 3091), Berlin; Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg: Springer-Verlag, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 53:

     Take two curryings ${\displaystyle {\mathrm{\Gamma }}_1((N\times N\to N)\times (N\times N\to N)\times L\to L))=(N\times N\to N)\times (N\times N\to N)\to (L\to L)}$ and ${\displaystyle {\mathrm{\Gamma }}_2((N\times N\to N)\times (N\times N\to N)\times L\times N\to L))=(N\times N\to N)\times (N\times N\to N)\to (L\times N\to L)}$. Currying ${\displaystyle ℛ}$ twice, we have the following curried SRS [S-expression rewriting system] ${\displaystyle {\mathrm{\Gamma }}_2({\mathrm{\Gamma }}_1(ℛ))}$.

     Curried is an adjective use.

   • 2011, Zachary Kessin, Programming HTML5 Applications: Building Powerful Cross-Platform Environments in JavaScript, Sebastopol, Calif.: O’Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 21:

     The easiest way to curry parameters is to create a function that takes a parameter block and returns a function that will call the original function with the presupplied parameters as defaults […]

   • 2011, Cynthia Kop, “Simplifying Algebraic Functional Systems”, in Franz Winkler, editor, Algebraic Informatics: 4th International Conference, CAI 2011, Linz, Austria, June 21–24, 2011: Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 6742), Berlin; Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg: Springer-Verlag, →DOI, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 212:

     In first-order rewriting, the question whether properties such as confluence and termination are preserved under currying or uncurrying is studied in [5,6,2]. In [6] a currying transformation from (functional) term rewriting systems (TRSs) into applicative term rewriting systems (ATRSs) is defined; a TRS is terminating if and only if its curried form is.

     An adjective use.

   • 2015, Leonardo Borges, Clojure Reactive Programming, Packt Publishing, →ISBN, page 194:

     Next, we curry the avg function to 3 arguments and put it into an option.

• curried (adjective)
• currying (noun)
• uncurried (adjective)
• uncurry
• uncurrying (noun)

Possibly derived from currier, a common 16th- to 18th-century form of courier, as if to ride post, to post. Possibly influenced by scurry.

curry (third-person singular simple present curries, present participle currying, simple past and past participle curried)

1. (intransitive, obsolete) To scurry; to ride or run hastily
2. (transitive, obsolete) To cover (a distance); (of a projectile) to traverse (its range).
   • 1608, George Chapman, The Conspiracie, and Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron, section 2.245:

     I am not hee that can ... by midnight leape my horse, curry seauen miles.

   • 1662, Thomas Salusbury, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogue Two)

     All these shots shall curry or finish their ranges in times equal to each other.

3. (transitive, obsolete) To hurry.
   • 1676, Andrew Marvell, Mr. Smirke, section 34:

     A sermon is soon curryed over.

curry (plural curries)

1. Obsolete form of quarry.

• curry on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “curry”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.

• IPA^(key): /kuri/ [ku.ri]
• Rhymes: -uri, -i

curry inan

1. curry powder
2. curry dish

• “curry”, in Euskaltzaindiaren Hiztegia [Dictionary of the Basque Academy] (in Basque), Euskaltzaindia [Royal Academy of the Basque Language]

Borrowed from English curry.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkʏ.ri/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: cur‧ry
• Rhymes: -ʏri

curry m (plural curry's, diminutive curry'tje n)

1. the spicy condiment curry powder

   Synonyms: kerrie, kerriepoeder

2. a curry dish

   Synonym: kerrieschotel

3. curry ketchup

   Synonym: curryketchup

• karri

Borrowed from English curry, itself from Tamil கறி (kaṟi).

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɑrːi/, [ˈkɑ̝rːi]
• Rhymes: -ɑrːi
• Syllabification^(key): cur‧ry
• Hyphenation^(key): cur‧ry

curry

1. curry, curry powder (south Asian spice mix)
2. curry (a dish made using this spice mixture)

• “curry”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎^[3] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2 July 2023

Borrowed into Middle French from multiple sources including English curry, all ultimately derived from Tamil கறி (kaṟi).

• IPA^(key): /ky.ʁi/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

  (file)

curry m (plural currys)

1. curry

   Synonym: cari

• “curry”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

Unadapted borrowing from English curry.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɛr.ri/, /ˈkar.ri/
• Rhymes: -ɛrri, -arri

curry m (invariable)

1. curry; curry powder

Unadapted borrowing from English curry, from Tamil கறி (kaṟi).

• IPA^(key): /ˈka.rɘ/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -arɘ
• Syllabification: cu‧rry
• Homophone: kary

curry n (indeclinable)

1. curry (dish)
2. curry powder

• “curry”, in Wielki słownik języka polskiego‎^[4] (in Polish), Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• “curry”, in Polish dictionaries at PWN‎^[5] (in Polish)

Unadapted borrowing from English curry. Displaced caril in Brazil.

curry m (uncountable)

1. (Brazil) curry powder (mixture of spices used in Asian cooking)

   Synonym: caril

2. (Brazil) curry (dish made with curry powder)

• “curry”, in Dicionário Aulete Digital (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2026
• “curry”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2026

Unadapted borrowing from French curry, from English curry, from Tamil கறி (kaṟi).

curry m (uncountable)

1. curry powder (mixture of spices)
2. curry (dish)

• curri

Unadapted borrowing from English curry.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkuri/ [ˈku.ri]
• Rhymes: -uri
• Syllabification: cu‧rry

curry m (plural currys)

1. curry

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.

• “curry”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025

• Audio:

  (file)

curry c (uncountable)

1. curry powder

• currypasta (“curry paste”)

• “curry”, in Svensk ordbok [Dictionary of Swedish] (in Swedish)
• “curry”, in Svenska Akademiens ordlista [Wordlist of the Swedish Academy] (in Swedish)
• “curry”, in Svenska Akademiens ordbok [Dictionary of the Swedish Academy] (in Swedish)