curiosity
Pluralcuriosities (some meanings)
- 1An eagerness to learn about things by asking questions, investigating, and exploring.
Like a flame that grows brighter the more questions you feed it.
Scientific progress is often driven by simple curiosity about how things work.
The children's curiosity about the strange noise led them down to the basement.
Similarinquisitiveness
Oppositeindifference, apathy, disinterest
Note
A Latin word that pushed out a native one: Middle English curiosite came through Anglo-Norman from cūriōsitās and displaced Old English firwitt. In this sense it is uncountable, with no article and no plural, and it takes about or regarding before its object: curiosity about self-control, curiosity regarding forbidden subjects. You eye something with curiosity, and Arthur C. Clarke's morbid curiosity is the kind drawn to what others leave alone.
- 2An object that attracts interest because it is unusual or one of a kind.
Like a one-of-a-kind item in a collector's cabinet that stops everyone who passes.
The museum displayed a curiosity from the deep sea that no one could quite name.
Among the antiques was a mechanical bird, a curiosity that drew a small crowd.
Similaroddity, novelty, rarity, wonder, marvel
Note
Here the word turns countable: a curiosity, two curiosities. The plural keeps company with collectors. Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) fills a room with nicknacks and curiosities fit to engage a virtuoso. The noun also works before another noun, as in curiosity cabinet, a case for strange rocks and the like. Unlike the inquisitive meaning, it names the thing that provokes interest rather than the interest itself.
- 3Careful, delicate construction; fine workmanship and close attention to detail in building or making something.
Note
A maker's compliment that has dropped out of the language. John Smith, writing in 1631, sets houses "of the like curiosity" against those of "much worse workmanship," so the word measured how finely something was built. In older prose, take care not to read it as the rare-object meaning. In present-day writing, use craftsmanship or delicacy instead, since this use is obsolete.
Practice
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Origin
It comes from Middle English "curiosite," borrowed via Anglo-Norman "curiouseté" from Latin "cūriōsitās." In effect it is "curious" plus "-ity," and it replaced the native Old English word "firwitt."