Word
curate
Phoneticscu·rate
/ˈkjʊɹət/
Definitions
01to organize a collection
v. to choose and organize items for an exhibition or a collection, such as in a museum or gallery.
v. to select, organize, and look after the items in a collection or exhibition. Transitive — requires a direct object.
“She was invited to curate a special exhibition of modern photography at the city gallery.”
“The museum spent three years preparing to curate the retrospective, ensuring each artifact was displayed in its proper historical context.”
Usage
Commonly used with museum exhibitions, art galleries, and historical archives.
03a member of the clergy
n. a priest who helps the main leader of a church.
n. a member of the clergy who assists a rector or vicar in a parish. The term implies a subordinate role within the church hierarchy.
“The young curate was responsible for visiting the elderly members of the parish.”
“After his ordination, he served as a curate in a small rural village before being appointed to a larger city church.”
Formal
Teaching tip
Note the pronunciation difference: the noun is often pronounced with a shorter final syllable than the verb.
Synonyms
Real-World Examples
“That exposure is often unwanted and happens even when teens try to curate their feeds to avoid it.” “Earlier this year the painting was officially reattributed to Peeters, and it will be one of the star exhibits in Woman Painter at the National Museum of Norway opening 8 October, curated by Osiecki.” “Huw Cheston and colleagues trained supervised learning models to identify performers from a curated dataset of 84 hours of recordings from 1,629 performances by 20 famous jazz pianists.” Etymology
Borrowed from Medieval Latin cūrātus (“one who has been curated, a curate”), a substantivation of the perfect passive participle of cūrō. Doublet of curato and curé. Equivalent to cure + -ate (noun-forming suffix).
Back-formation from curator on the basis of -ate (verb-forming suffix).
From cur(ium) + -ate.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/curate