curt

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin curtus (“cut or broken short, mutilated, abridged”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} which in Late Latin and the Romance languages became the ordinary word for "short": corto, corto, cort, court.^[2] Barnhart has it borrowed through Old French court or cort, or directly from Latin,^[7][8] and the American Heritage Dictionary takes it as Middle English, through Anglo-Norman.^[9] The Latin adjective goes back to Proto-Indo-European *kr̥-tó- (“cut off”), from the root *sker- (“to cut”),^{[10][8][11][9]} and is related to Ancient Greek καρτός (kartós, “cut off, shorn”) and κείρω (keírō, “to cut off, shave”).^[10][12] The same root gave the native short and shear.^[8][13] The OED notes that the Latin word was taken early into German, giving Old Saxon curt, Old Frisian curt, Dutch kort and Old High German kurt, kurz, now German kurz, where it replaced the native Germanic word that survives in English short.^[2][13][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of words, sentences or style, concise, brief, terse: 1631, in Ben Jonson's The New Inn,^[2] or 1630 according to Barnhart.^[8] Merriam-Webster dates the first known use to 1630.^[14] Earlier dates are claimed by some dictionaries: Etymonline has a form court "short, concise" from the mid-14th century,^[11] Barnhart dates the adjective to 1425 and finds it in the surname Courtehose in 1366,^[8] and the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English date it to late Middle English, in the sense "short, shortened".^[3][6]

Semantic evolution

The literal sense "short in length; shortened", now archaic, is recorded from 1665, when Thomas Herbert wrote in his travels that in milder climates hair is curt.^[2][15][3] From 1631 the word described speech and writing that was concise,^[2][8] and by 1831, in Disraeli's The Young Duke, speech so brief that it lacked courtesy;^[2][8][11] this is now the main sense.^[5][4] Johnson (1755) gave only "short".^[16] Weekley notes that, although curt is a modern word, the Latin adjective appears much earlier in English in the derivative kirtle.^[12] A verb curt, to cut short, from curtō (“to shorten”), is recorded only once, before 1618.^[2]

Timeline

• before 1618 – verb, to cut short (obsolete).^[2]
• 1631 – of speech or writing, concise, terse.^[2][8]
• 1665 – short in length, shortened.^[2][15]
• 1831 – so brief as to be rude.^[2][8][11]

Meanings

Adjective

1. So short and abrupt in speech or manner as to seem rude: The clerk's curt reply annoyed the waiting customers.^[5][14][2]
2. Of speech or writing, brief and concise; terse.^[5][14][2]
3. (archaic) Short in length; shortened.^[3][2]

Word family

• curtly
• curtness

Related words

• shirt
• short
• skirt
• shear
• curtail
• curtal
• kirtle

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
6. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
14. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
15. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.