curt

From the Latin curtus (“shortened”). Cognate with Dutch kort, German kurz, Galician curto, French court, Italian corto, Portuguese curto, and Spanish corto. Doublet of short.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /kɝt/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /kɜːt/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)t
• Homophone: Kurt

curt (comparative curter, superlative curtest)

1. Brief or terse, especially to the point of being rude.

   Synonyms: brusque, short

   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “XVIII AND XIX”, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:

     Again I begged her to keep an eye on her blood pressure and not get so worked up, and once more she brushed me off, this time with a curt request that I would go and boil my head. [...] Beginning with a curt “Listen, Buster,” she proceeded to sketch out with admirable clearness the salient points in the situation as she envisaged it […]

2. Short or concise.

curt (third-person singular simple present curts, present participle curting, simple past and past participle curted)

1. (obsolete, rare) To cut, cut short, shorten.
   • 1608, [Guillaume de Salluste] Du Bartas, translated by Josuah Sylvester, Du Bartas His Deuine Weekes and Workes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Humfrey Lownes [and are to be sold by Arthur Iohnson […]], published 1611, →OCLC:

     Curting thy life, hee takes thy Card away.

• curtly
• curtness
• curtail
• curtailment
• kirtle

• shirt
• short
• skirt

• An historical dictionary

• crut

Inherited from Latin curtus.

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic) [ˈkurt]
• IPA^(key): (Valencia) [ˈkuɾt]

• Audio:

  (file)

• Homophone: kurd
• Rhymes: -uɾt

curt (feminine curta, masculine plural curts, feminine plural curtes)

1. short

   Antonym: llarg

• “curt”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007
• “curt”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2025.
• “curt” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “curt” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

From Latin curtus.

curt m (feminine curte, masculine plural curts, feminine plural curtis)

1. short

• scurtâ

From Latin curtus.

curt m (feminine singular curta, masculine plural cursc, feminine plural curtes)

1. brief, short

• scurter

curt

1. alternative form of court

From Proto-West Germanic *kurt, which is a borrowing from Latin curtus.

curt

1. short

• Middle Dutch: curt, cort
  • Dutch: kort
    • Afrikaans: kort
    • Negerhollands: kort, kot
    • Skepi Creole Dutch: kort

• “kurt”, in Oudnederlands Woordenboek, 2012

curt oblique singular, f (oblique plural curz or curtz, nominative singular curt, nominative plural curz or curtz)

1. (Anglo-Norman) alternative form of cort

Borrowed from Hungarian kurta.

curt m or n (feminine singular curtă, masculine plural curți, feminine and neuter plural curte)

1. short-tailed

curt m (uncountable)

1. short-tailed animal

• curt in Academia Română, Micul dicționar academic, ediția a II-a, Bucharest: Univers Enciclopedic, 2010. →ISBN