Curt

//kɝt// adj, name, verb

adj, name, verb ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To cut, cut short, shorten. obsolete, rare

    "Curting thy life, hee takes thy Card away."

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

    "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. 2
    Short or concise.
Adjective
  1. 1
    brief and to the point; effectively cut short wordnet
  2. 2
    marked by rude or peremptory shortness wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A short form of the male given name Curtis
  2. 2
    A male given name from the Germanic languages, an anglicized spelling of Kurt

Synonyms

All synonyms
abruptbrusquelaconicabbreviatedabridgedaggressive

Example

More examples

"Don't you think it's rude to give people such a curt reply like that?"

Etymology

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.

Related phrases

curt-axecut short

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.