curve

Meanings

Adjective

• Bent without angles; crooked; curved.

Noun

• A gentle bend, such as in a road.
• A simple figure containing no straight portions and no angles; a curved line.
• A grading system based on the scale of performance of a group used to normalize a right-skewed grade distribution (with more lower scores) into a bell curve, so that more can receive higher grades, regardless of their actual knowledge of the subject.
• A continuous map from a one-dimensional space to a multidimensional space.
• A one-dimensional figure of non-zero length; the graph of a continuous map from a one-dimensional space.
• An algebraic curve; a polynomial relation of the planar coordinates.
• A one-dimensional continuum.
• The attractive shape of a woman's body.

Verb

• To bend; to crook.
• To cause to swerve from a straight course.
• To bend or turn gradually from a given direction.
• To grade on a curve (bell curve of a normal distribution).
• To reject, to turn down romantic advances.

Origin

• From Latin curvus. curb.