Cu"ri*ous (k?"r?-?s), a. [OF. curios, curius, F. curieux, L. curiosus careful, inquisitive, fr. cura care. See Cure.]
1.
Difficult to please or satisfy; solicitous to be correct; careful; scrupulous; nice; exact.
[Obs.]
Little curious in her clothes.
Fuller.
How shall we,
If he be curious, work upon his faith?
Bean &
2.
Exhibiting care or nicety; artfully constructed; elaborate; wrought with elegance or skill.
To devise curious works.
Ex. xxxv. 32
His body couched in a curious bed.
Shak.
3.
Careful or anxious to learn; eager for knowledge; given to research or inquiry; habitually inquisitive; prying; -- sometimes with after or of.
It is a piy a gentleman so very curious after things that were elegant and beatiful should not have been as curious as to their origin, their uses, and their natural history.
Woodward.
4.
Exciting attention or inquiry; awakening surprise; inviting and rewarding inquisitiveness; not simple or plain; strange; rare.
"A
curious tale"
Shak.
A multitude of curious analogies.
Mocaulay.
Many a quaint and curiousvolume of forgotten lore.
E. A. Poe.
Abstruse investigations in recondite branches of learning or sciense often bring to light curious results.
C. J. Smith.
Curious arts, magic. [Obs.]
Many . . . which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them.
Acts xix. 19.
Syn. -- Inquisitive; prying. See Inquisitive.
© Webster 1913.