curl
Definitions
General English
- noun a piece of hair which grows in a twist
- noun a curved shape of a particular substance
- verb to twist, or make something twist
Cricket
- noun movement of the ball in the air or off the pitch; swing or breakCitation ‘I have not been able to discover, any more than the bowlers themselves, why or how curl in the air takes place’ (Ranjitsinhji 1897)
- verb (of the ball) to change direction by moving in the air or off the pitch; swing or breakCitation ‘He [Lamborn] was once bowling against the Duke of Dorset, and, delivering his ball straight to the wicket, it curled in, and missed the Duke’s leg-stump by a hair’s breadth’ (Nyren 1833 in HM)Citation ‘It is a well-known fact that a new ball will invariably curl more than one which has had thirty or forty runs scored off it’ (Warner 1934)
Publishing
- noun a measurement of the amount by which paper curls in damp conditions
Sports
- noun a weight training exercise in which a weight held in the hand or hands is lifted by curling the forearm towards the upper arm
Origin & History of “curl”
Curl seems to have been borrowed from middle Dutch krul ‘curly’, and indeed the original English forms of the word were crolle and crulle. The present-day form arose in the 15th century by a process known as metathesis, whereby the sounds r and u were transposed. The Middle Dutch word came from a Germanic *krusl-, source also of German kraus ‘curly’. modern Dutch krul, meanwhile, has given English cruller ‘small cake of twisted shape’ (19th c.).
