curry

Etymology 1

1747 (as currey, first published recipe for the dish in English), from Tamil கறி (kaṟi), influenced by existing Middle English cury (“cooking”), from Middle French cuyre (“to cook”) (from which also cuisine), from Vulgar Latin cocere, from Latin coquere, present active infinitive of coquō. Earlier cury found in 1390 cookbook Forme of Cury (Forms of Cooking) by court chefs of Richard II of England.

noun

1. One of a family of dishes originating from Indian cuisine, flavoured by a spiced sauce.
2. A spiced sauce or relish, especially one flavoured with curry powder.
3. Curry powder.

verb

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

Etymology 2

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.

verb

1. (transitive) To groom (a horse); to dress or rub down a horse with a curry comb.
   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. 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 11, in Mr. Pratt's Patients
2. (transitive) To dress (leather) after it is tanned by beating, rubbing, scraping and colouring.
3. (transitive) To beat, thrash; to drub.
4. (transitive, figurative) To try to win or gain (favour) by flattering.
   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. 2014-08-27, Stephanie Zacharek, “The Last of Robin Hood Wrestles with a Star's Underage Love”, in The Village Voice, archived from the original on 2014-09-03

Etymology 3

Named after American mathematician Haskell Curry.

verb

1. (transitive, computing) To perform currying upon.
   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, Zachary Kessin, Programming HTML5 Applications: Building Powerful Cross-Platform Environments in JavaScript, "O'Reilly Media, Inc.", page 21
   Next, we curry the avg function to 3 arguments and put it into an option. 2015, Leonardo Borges, Clojure Reactive Programming, Packt Publishing Ltd, page 194

Etymology 4

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

verb

1. (intransitive, obsolete) To scurry; to ride or run hastily
2. (transitive, obsolete) To cover (a distance); (of a projectile) to traverse (its range).
   I am not hee that can ... by midnight leape my horse, curry seauen miles. 1608, George Chapman, The Conspiracie, and Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron, section 2.245
   All these shots shall curry or finish their ranges in times equal to each other. 1662, Thomas Salusbury, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogue Two)
3. (transitive, obsolete) To hurry.
   A sermon is soon curryed over. 1676, Andrew Marvell, Mr. Smirke, section 34

Etymology 5

noun

1. Obsolete form of quarry.