Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To groom (a horse) with a currycomb.
- v. To prepare (tanned hides) for use, as by soaking or coloring.
- idiom. curry favor To seek or gain favor by fawning or flattery.
- n. Curry powder.
- n. A heavily spiced sauce or relish made with curry powder and eaten with rice, meat, fish, or other food.
- n. A dish seasoned with curry powder.
- v. To season (food) with curry.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To rub and clean (a horse) with a comb; groom: sometimes used in contempt, with reference to a person.
- Hence2. To stroke as if to soothe; flatter.
- To dress or prepare (tanned hides) for use by soaking, skiving, shaving, scouring, coloring, graining, etc.
- Figuratively, to beat; drub; thrash: as, to curry one's hide.
- n. A kind of sauce or relish, made of meat, fish, fowl, fruit, eggs, or vegetables, cooked with bruised spices, such as cayenne-pepper, coriander-seed, ginger, garlic, etc., with turmeric, much used in India and elsewhere as a relish or flavoring for boiled rice. The article of food prepared with this sauce is said to be curried: as, curried rice, curried fowl, etc.
- To flavor or prepare with curry.
Wiktionary
- n. One of a family of dishes originating from South Asian cuisine, flavoured by a spiced sauce.
- n. A spiced sauce or relish, especially one flavoured with curry powder.
- n. Curry powder
- v. transitive To cook or season with curry powder.
- v. transitive To groom (a horse); to dress or rub down a horse with a curry comb
- v. transitive To dress (leather) after it is tanned by beating, rubbing, scraping and colouring
- v. transitive To beat, thrash; to drub
- v. transitive To try to win or gain (favour) by flattering.
- v. transitive, computing To perform currying upon.
- v. intransitive, obsolete To scurry; to ride or run hastily.
- v. transitive, obsolete To cover (a distance); (of a projectile) to traverse (its range).
- v. transitive, obsolete To hurry.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To dress or prepare for use by a process of scraping, cleansing, beating, smoothing, and coloring; -- said of leather.
- v. To dress the hair or coat of (a horse, ox, or the like) with a currycomb and brush; to comb, as a horse, in order to make clean.
- v. To beat or bruise; to drub; -- said of persons.
- n. (Cookery) A kind of sauce much used in India, containing garlic, pepper, ginger, and other strong spices.
- n. A stew of fowl, fish, or game, cooked with curry.
- v. To flavor or cook with curry.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (East Indian cookery) a pungent dish of vegetables or meats flavored with curry powder and usually eaten with rice
- v. treat by incorporating fat
- v. season with a mixture of spices; typical of Indian cooking
- v. give a neat appearance to
Etymologies
- Possibly derived from currier, a common 16-18th century form of courier, as if to ride post, to post. Possibly influenced by scurry. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English curreien, from Anglo-Norman curreier, to arrange, curry, from Vulgar Latin *conrēdāre : Latin com-, com- + Vulgar Latin *-rēdāre, to make ready (of Germanic origin; see reidh- in Indo-European roots). Curry favor, by folk etymology from Middle English currayen favel, from Old French correier fauvel, to curry a fallow-colored horse, be hypocritical (from the fallow horse as a medieval symbol of deceit).Tamil kaṟi. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“This kofta curry is an original from my kitchen lab.”
“The recipe for the curry is again adapted from The Indian Restaurant Cookbook – it had no proper palak paneer recipe but I adapted its spinach curry for it.”
“This turned out to be a fabulous Sunday lunch for us, the curry is aromatic and subtle, very flavorful indeed.”
“India where curry is a staple has a very low rate of Alzheimer's.”
The Huffington Post: Jean Carper: In Honor of World Alzheimer's Day, Take a Hike Today
“They also help when the curry is too spicy but then if you eat somethng too spicy, eating carbs is not a bad remedy.”
“My idea was to start the topic about the cultural differences so I mentioned my Indian friend (after all, we were at the time in curry place).”
“This curry is lipsmacking good, especially with Bajarichi Bhakari.”
“A mesmerizing combination of Dark Chocolate ganache, curry from the mysterious East, and gobbets of chili-laced mango.”
“I watched the Jamie programme right the way through first, worked out that it was a simple veg curry from a premade paste as performed daily in a thousand halls of residence – and then happily bet my editor I could knock it out in 25 mins.”
The Guardian: Bish, bash, bosh: putting Jamie's 30 Minute Meals to the test
“And my lunch menu contains leftovers from the curry cookoff yesterday: Bell pepper curry on rice, and plantain curry with grapes and a cherry tomato in the upper layer.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘curry’.
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Programming Languages
The last time someone tried this theme, it was a closed list with only two words; time to make amends. Scripting languages, etc. are also fair game...
c, c++, java, pascal, delphi, python, perl, lisp, algol, cobol, ada, apl and 121 more...
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UK - slang
chin wag, arse about, bollock, starkers, sweet Fanny Adams, skive, shufti, codswallop, rhyming slang, bollocks, nookie, skew-whiff and 208 more...
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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Realia from Everywhere
Culturally defined terms and expressions from the four corners of the world
fjord, mistral steppe, tornado, tsunami, polder, kiwi, koala, sequoia, Abominable Snowman, paprika, spaghetti, empanada and 299 more...
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Tristram Shandy
souse, meet, sententious, propound, boot, casuistry, avoirdupois, akimbo, disport, lenity, succussation, sweetbread and 160 more...
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food collection
bread, peel, pot, chorizo, Filet, olive, fill, Phyllo, dough, bake, mat, pinot and 988 more...
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Open List: Sauces
A list of sauces, used in cuisines around the world. Many of these are listed in the encyplopedic tome of French cookery, Larouse Gastronomique.
Be sure to visit Ruzuzu's savory list ...vinaigrette, hollandaise, mayonnaise, juniper berry and..., béarnaise, allemande, sauce suprême, tarragon sauce, ravigote sauce, vert-pré sauce, tortue sauce, béchamel and 118 more...
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These Verbs Are Made of Meat
baconize, baconise, meatpacking, permeate, hambone hambone h..., spam, fillet, shank, mince, beef, chine, flank and 28 more...
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Vurtchester
Words thought of by thinking about Jeff Noon.
sexy, madchester, bass, feather, slick, vaz, rain, rainbow, electric, dub, fetish, yellow and 10 more...
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Nycanthro's list
I like words. Have kept running lists for years now. If I'd been born wealthy I'd be a linguist. Or maybe a semi-reclusive yet world-weary linguist-humanitarian-hiphop-icon known for his humility a...
oaktag, backstory, homonormative, gobshite, imagineer, comeuppance, tomfoolery, ersatz, widdershins, gigajoule, oneupmanship, conniption and 40 more...
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Curry
curry, korma, qorma, jalfrezi, xacuti, sagoti, vindaloo, saagwala, bhuna, keema, kheema, qeema and 20 more...
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Saucy
See also Hernesheir's Open List: Sauces.
hollandaise, mayonnaise, béarnaise, bolognaise, bordelaise, rouennaise, satay, chilli, béchamel, dijonnaise, hoisin, soy and 60 more...
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Color Words for Shoes
Vendors can get oddly creative.
amaranth, brindle, iguana, slate black, madder brown, bison, pinecone, seal brown, forest night, burnt orange, monument, beet red and 399 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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billfence's Words
quotidian, flux, sawbuck, horsefeathers, chalcedony, harp, no, fox, tennis, badminton, flue, charm and 186 more...
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Malachi_Constant's Words
triumverate, pandemic, parsnip, delineate, zamboni, parka, laser, swoop, malevolent, benevolent, fracas, tipsy and 372 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for curry.

qroqqa The sense "groom" (verb) ultimately comes from Late Latin *con-red- "make ready", with a root borrowed from Germanic.
(This is cognate with Spanish correios "couriers, post", familiar from stamps—and unrelated to 'courier'. The root also gives 'read' via a sense "advise", cf. German Rat. Its borrowing into Romance also occurs in 'array'.)
The 'favour' in the idiom is a mediaeval eggcorn: it comes from 'curry Favel', a fallow horse, proverbial for being deceitful. Mar 6, 2009
martagreen (idiom) "curry favor": To seek or gain favor by fawning or flattery. Mar 6, 2009
yarb 'Mother kept saying "I told you so. I
told you he was a low type." I never
ate their horrid curries, he never ate
anything else and whisky, whisky -
probably he got ulcers years ago,
I hope he did and he's dead dead DEAD now.'
- Peter Reading, Mem-sahib, from The Prison Cell and Barrel Mystery, 1976 Jun 23, 2008
jennarenn I thought that there were few things worse than the Ed School by this name, but this conversation is one of them. Oct 12, 2007
reesetee Unaficionados say "Eeeew." Oct 11, 2007
chained_bear Oh god. *gack* Oct 11, 2007
oroboros Yeah! With a gap of 12 and 24 hours between the burns... Oct 11, 2007
kewpid Aficionados say a good curry burns twice. Oct 11, 2007
arthegall Is there any other sense? Dec 12, 2006