curry

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A spicy dish of meat, fish, or vegetables cooked in a sauce, common in South Asian cooking.

   We ordered a chicken curry with rice.

2. 2
   verb

   To try to gain someone's favor or approval by flattering or pleasing them.

   He was always trying to curry favor with the boss.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Curry as the name of a dish comes from Tamil kari “sauce” and is recorded in English from the late 16th century. The verb in curry favour has an unrelated history: Middle English curry meant “groom a horse with a coarse brush or comb” and came from Old French. Curry favour alters medieval curry favel, “groom Favel,” referring to a deceitful horse named Fauvel in a 14th-century French tale; the phrase consequently developed the sense “seek approval through flattery.”

1747 (as currey, first published recipe for the dish in English), from Tamil கறி (kaṟi), influenced by existing Middle English cury (“cooking”), from Middle French cuyre (“to cook”) (whence also cuisine), from Vulgar Latin cocere, from Latin coquere. Earlier cury found in 1390 cookbook Forme of Cury (Forms of Cooking) by court chefs of Richard II of England.

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