curve

adj

1. (obsolete)Bent without angles; crooked; curved.

   “a curve line”

   “a curve surface”

noun

1. A gentle bend, such as in a road.

   “You should slow down when approaching a curve.”

   “But when we reflect that across the road at the centre of the arc of each curve there was a barricade, and cannon placed to rake the' intervals between the different barricades, the difficulties of the ascent, which is very steep, would be increased even to insurmountability.”

   “In appearance, the bharal resembles both a sheep and a goat. Its horns are smooth, rounded and form a curve backwards over the neck. The fur is brownish grey in colour which attains a slaty grey hue in winter and becomes browner in summer. In Kumaun the bharal is found in the desolate tracts of northern Pithoragarh, usually on the slopes of the main Himalayan range where it lives between the timberline and the snowline.”

   “AROUND six years ago, Hyundai figured a 10-year warranty was not enough to attract shoppers and conjured up daring design for more attention. Sonata was the first to get the Fluidic Sculpture makeover, but the fifth-generation Elantra ended up being the swoopiest of the fleet. Hyundai’s newest gamble? Toning down those curves. […] Laugh at that detail now — you won’t when the sun is blinding you at 75 miles an hour on a curve.”

2. A simple figure containing no straight portions and no angles; a curved line.

   “She scribbled a curve on the paper.”

   “However, it should be possible to give more sophisticated spherical spline curves based on the de Castaljau method that are computed using multiple slerps between pairs of points and which work well for arbitrary knot positions (indeed, knot insertion methods for spline curves should suffice for this, cf Farin [1993])”

3. 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.

   “The teacher was nice and graded the test on a curve.”

4. (broadly, nonstandard)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.
5. (analytic)A continuous map from a one-dimensional space to a multidimensional space.
6. A one-dimensional figure of non-zero length; the graph of a continuous map from a one-dimensional space.
7. An algebraic curve; a polynomial relation of the planar coordinates.
8. A one-dimensional continuum.
9. (informal, plural-normally)The attractive shape of a woman's body.

verb

1. (transitive)To bend; to crook.

   “to curve a line”

   “to curve a pipe”

2. (transitive)To cause to swerve from a straight course.

   “to curve a ball in pitching it”

3. (intransitive)To bend or turn gradually from a given direction.

   “the road curves to the right”

   “[…] the shoulders not too wide above, bowing outward from the top to the breast; the back flat from shoulder to tail; the ribs extending horizontally and backwards, and then curving down barrelwise; […]”

   “The double-track branch curves away southwards at the south end of the station and runs on a banked down gradient gradually losing sight of the main line.”

   “Even without mobilization of the bone, the median eyelid angle can be deplaced in the nasal direction. For this purpose, we inserted a heart-shaped cartilage implant, curved toward the caruncula.”

4. (transitive)To grade on a curve (bell curve of a normal distribution).

   “The teacher will curve the test.”

5. (slang, transitive)To reject, to turn down romantic advances.

   “I was once curved three times by the same woman.”