curly

Formscurlier, curliest

Pluralcurlies

1. 1
   adjective

   Having curls; forming a coiled or wavy shape rather than lying straight.

   His beard had grown long and curly over the winter.

   The vine sent out curly tendrils that gripped the fence.

   Similarcurled, wavy, coiled, frizzy

   Oppositestraight

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A person or animal having curly hair.

   Grandpa always called me his little curly because of my ringlets.

   Among the show poodles, the judges favored a fluffy curly from the next county.

3. 3
   adjective

   Of quotation marks or apostrophes, curving in a direction rather than standing straight.

   Professional typesetters prefer curly quotation marks for a more polished page.

   Her word processor automatically converted the straight apostrophe into a curly one.

   Similarcurved, smart

   Oppositestraight

   Note

   A typographer's distinction: the curve gives each mark a direction, so an opening mark can be told from a closing one at a glance. The contrast is with straight marks, the plain vertical strokes inherited from typewriters and plain-text systems. In talk about type, the useful pairing is curly versus straight (curly quotes, a curly apostrophe), and the choice between them is a question of how a page is set, not of punctuation rules.

4. 4
   adjectiveAustralia

   Complicated and difficult to deal with; thorny or knotty.

   The committee spent all afternoon untangling one particularly curly clause in the contract.

   That's a curly question, and there's no easy answer to it.

   Similartricky, thorny, knotty, difficult

   Oppositesimple, easy, straightforward

   Note

   An Australian figure of speech that carries the twisting shape over to trouble: a curly matter is tangled and hard to straighten out. It sits naturally before a noun, as in a curly problem or a curly question. Chris Cooper's Behind the Private Eye (2005) warns that the job "will throw you a curly problem." Outside Australian English it may puzzle a listener, so knotty or thorny are the safer choices there.

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