quote:

The Athenæum, a few years ago [March 24, 1866], published a letter in which the word curious, as now most commonly employed, was assailed with great vehemence. The use referred to is that which, we are told, makes the word a synonym of "strange" or "extraordinary"; though I should prefer to say, 'novel', 'unusual', or, more generally, 'novel and noticeable'. "This use of the word", the letter-writer objects, "is at once novel and absurd, and, I cannot but think, unknown in the writings of every good author." Wrought upon by this supposed discovery, at least a dozen different correspondents, writing in journals which fell in my way, rushed into publicity, to assist in its promulgation ; and, in some American book [Mr. Edward S. Gould's Good English, if my memory serves me faithfully.] which I have not at hand, the Athenæum letter was reprinted in full, and without comment. There seems to be no doubt, that, to many minds, almost any statement, if not palpably incredible, is invested with validity by the bare circumstance of being put in black and white.

The truth, I believe, as concerns the sense of curious under consideration, is, that, from Queen Anne's time down to the present day, very few authors have not employed it. That, in the mean time, it has escaped the indolence of all our lexicographers but the most recent will not seem remarkable to any one conversant with the shortcomings of our lexicographers. To Addison it was good English; and Gray, Johnson, Burke, Cowper, Coleridge, Southey, and Lord Macaulay have agreed with him in so esteeming it. As will be seen, on verifying the references given at the foot of the page, expressions having it is, or the like, prefixed to curious, which the censurer of the simple adjective finds peculiarly exceptionable, are, likewise, perfectly classical; and so is curiously, for 'observably'.

Curious, in its more modern acceptation, is not, then, "novel"; and it is very far indeed from being "unknown in the writings of every good author". And no more is it "absurd". First the word denoted a state of mind, interest or diligence in inquiry or prosecution; then it was predicated of things which exhibit evident tokens of care (cura), dexterous application, ingenuity; and, as such things are out of the common, and are apt to arrest attention, it naturally acquired the sense which has been thoughtlessly arraigned as contrary to reason. The second signification, 'executed with thought and skill', almost, in fact, denotes the objective correlative of that which is denoted by the first signification. Nice, before it meant 'agreeable', meant 'fastidious'; dreadful and frightful had, of old, the significations 'full of dread' and 'full of fright'; and all languages supply, in the secondary acceptations of words, liberal illustrations of objective developments from subjective originals. If the person who objected to the latest use of curious had generalized his objection, and, especially, if he had applied it impartially to our language at large, he would have found himself hampered by consequences which he little expected. Even as to curious itself, he would have had to alter not only Shakespeare's "curious bed", "most curious mantle", and "curious tale", but our Bible, with its "curious girdle" and "curious works". Our familiar curiosities, for 'rarities', would, also, in consistency, fall under the ban of this unreflecting denunciator.