currish
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Adjective
[edit]currish (comparative more currish, superlative most currish)
- Pertaining to a cur or mongrel.
- (now rare) Ignoble, mean-spirited.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- more enfierced through his curriſh play,
Him ſternely grypt, and haling to and fro,
To ouerthrow him ſtrongly did aſſay […] .
- c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:
- Gratiano:
O, be thou damn'd, inexecrable dog!
And for thy life let justice be accused.
Thou almost makest me waver in my faith,
To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit
Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter,
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam,
Infused itself in thee; for thy desires
Are wolfish, bloody, starved, and ravenous.
- 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II, section 1, member 3:
- God's vengeance, and all the plagues of Egypt come not upon us, since we are so currish one towards another, so respectless of God and our neighbours, and by our crying sins pull these miseries upon our own heads.