curve
verb
- change direction
noun
- object similar to a line but which is not required to be straight
- the act or process of bending, changing direction, or forming an arc
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /kɜːv/ / [ˈkʰɜːv] / /kɚv/
adj
Etymology: Attested since the 1690s, from Latin curvus (“bent, curved”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to bend, curve, turn”) + *-wós. Doublet of curb, shrink, carcer, and cancer.
- Bent without angles; crooked; curved.
“a curve line”
“a curve surface”
noun
Etymology: Attested since the 1690s, from Latin curvus (“bent, curved”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to bend, curve, turn”) + *-wós. Doublet of curb, shrink, carcer, and cancer.
- A gentle bend, such as in a road.
“You should slow down when approaching a curve.”
“But when we reflect that across the road at the centre of the arc of each curve there was a barricade, and cannon placed to rake the' intervals between the different barricades, the difficulties of the ascent, which is very steep, would be increased even to insurmountability.”
- A simple figure containing no straight portions and no angles; a curved line.
“She scribbled a curve on the paper.”
“However, it should be possible to give more sophisticated spherical spline curves based on the de Castaljau method that are computed using multiple slerps between pairs of points and which work well for arbitrary knot positions (indeed, knot insertion methods for spline curves should suffice for this, cf Farin [1993])”
- 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 a bell curve, so that more can receive higher grades, regardless of their actual knowledge of the subject.
“The teacher was nice and graded the test on a curve.”
- 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 a bell curve, so that more can receive higher grades, regardless of their actual knowledge of the subject.
- A continuous map from a one-dimensional space to a multidimensional space.
- A one-dimensional figure of non-zero length; the graph of a continuous map from a one-dimensional space.
- An algebraic curve; a polynomial relation of the planar coordinates.
- A one-dimensional continuum.
- The attractive shape of a woman's body.
verb
Etymology: Attested since the 1690s, from Latin curvus (“bent, curved”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to bend, curve, turn”) + *-wós. Doublet of curb, shrink, carcer, and cancer.
- To bend; to crook.
“to curve a line”
“to curve a pipe”
- To cause to swerve from a straight course.
“to curve a ball in pitching it”
- To bend or turn gradually from a given direction.
“the road curves to the right”
“[…] the shoulders not too wide above, bowing outward from the top to the breast; the back flat from shoulder to tail; the ribs extending horizontally and backwards, and then curving down barrelwise; […]”
- To grade on a curve (bell curve of a normal distribution).
“The teacher will curve the test.”
- To reject, to turn down romantic advances.
“I was once curved three times by the same woman.”