- a line or surface that bends gradually; a smooth bend
- The pattern was made up of straight lines and curves.
- curve of something He admired the delicate curve of her ear.
Extra ExamplesTopics Colours and Shapesb2- The seats were arranged to form a curve.
- the curve of his neck
- the natural curve of your spine
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryadjective- steep
- bell
- normal
- …
- plot
- flatten out
- indicate something
- show something
- …
- grade on a curve
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- (North American English) a place where a road bends or turns synonym bend
- curve in something a curve in the road
- on a curve The driver lost control on a curve and the vehicle hit a tree.
Extra Examples- He slowed down to negotiate the curve.
- Slow down at the curves.
- The car vanished around a curve.
- The road follows the coast in a wide curve.
- The road went around in a tight curve.
- a line on a graph that shows how one quantity varies compared with another
- The program automatically plots the curve on a graph.
- This figure shows the population curve for the last hundred years.
- a demand/yield/growth/supply curve
- (specialist) the unemployment-income curve (= showing the relationship between the number of unemployed people and national income)
- (also curveball)(in baseball) a ball that moves in a curve when it is thrown to the batterTopics Sports: ball and racket sportsc2
- (North American English, informal) (also curveball)something that is unexpected and difficult to deal with
- curves [plural]curving shapes that form part of a woman's body
- The supermodel showed off her famous curves in a figure-hugging red dress.
- The evening dress hugged her curves beautifully.
Word Originlate Middle English: from Latin curvare ‘to bend’, from curvus ‘bent’. The noun dates from the late 17th cent.
Idioms
See curve in the Oxford Advanced American DictionarySee curve in the Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic Englishahead of/behind the curve
- (business) in advance of or behind a particular trend
- Our expert advice will help you stay ahead of the curve.
- We've fallen behind the curve when it comes to developing new digital products.
flatten the curve
- to manage the rate or quantity of something so that it does not increase too much within a short period of time
- These measures are intended to flatten the curve of new infections in order to reduce the load on hospitals.
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curve