Curtly

adv

adv ·2 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adverb
  1. 1
    In a curt manner; tersely, almost rudely.

    "She greeted me with a bright smile, and said: “Back already? Did you find it?” With a strong effort I mastered my emotion and replied curtly but civilly that the answer was in the negative. “No,” I said, “I did not find it.”"

Adverb
  1. 1
    in a curt, abrupt and discourteous manner wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
abruptlyaphoristicallybearishlyblufflybluntlyboorishly

Example

More examples

"She greeted me with a bright smile, and said: “Back already? Did you find it?” With a strong effort I mastered my emotion and replied curtly but civilly that the answer was in the negative. “No,” I said, “I did not find it.”"

Etymology

From curt + -ly.

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