Curtail

//kɜːˈteɪl// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A scroll termination, as of a step, etc.
Verb
  1. 1
    To cut short the tail of (an animal). obsolete, transitive

    "Curtailing horses procured long horse-hair."

  2. 2
    place restrictions on wordnet
  3. 3
    To shorten or abridge the duration of; to bring an end to; to truncate. transitive

    "When the audience grew restless, the speaker curtailed her speech."

  4. 4
    terminate or abbreviate before its intended or proper end or its full extent wordnet
  5. 5
    To limit or restrict; to keep in check. figuratively, transitive

    "This is the rump of the C.L.C. branch to Southport Lord Street, which lost its passenger services beyond Aintree from January 7, 1952, whereupon the timetable between Gateacre and Aintree was greatly curtailed."

Synonyms

All synonyms
abbreviateclipcropshortentruncateabate

Example

More examples

"We can say that there's not a clear winner in terms of a policy to curtail medical expenses and benefits."

Etymology

Alteration of curtal, from Old French courtault (“which has been shortened”), itself from court (“short”) (from Latin curtus) + -ault

Related phrases

curtail dogin check

More for "curtail"

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