currish

currish

English

Etymology

From cur +‎ -ish.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkəːɹɪʃ/

Adjective

currish (comparative more currish, superlative most currish)

1. Pertaining to a cur or mongrel.
2. (now rare) Ignoble, mean-spirited.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.4:

     more enfierced through his currish play, / Him sternely grypt, and haling to and fro, / To ouerthrow him strongly did assay […].

   • c. 1596-97, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 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.

   • 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 216894069; The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd corrected and augmented edition, Oxford: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 1624, OCLC 54573970, 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.

Synonyms

• doggish

Anagrams

• cirrhus