Entry · catalog no. 0038
curve
/ /kɜːrv/ /KURV
verb · Harlem and New York Black speech, then nationwide · 2000s
✓ Verified
1.
To turn down someone's romantic or sexual interest. A curve is an indirect refusal: instead of saying no, you bend away from the person — an excuse, a slow reply, a changed subject, a message left sitting. It works as a transitive verb (she curved me) and as an imperative telling somebody to take themselves elsewhere. Distinct from ghosting, which is total silence; a curve keeps a thread of contact alive while going nowhere.
“I asked her twice and got curved twice — I'm done asking.”
Origin & Attribution
Harlem, 2009. The verb grew out of an earlier 2000s Black slang sense of curve meaning to leave or veer off, in the same family as bounce and dip. Cam'ron opens his 2009 track "Curve" by defining it in plain speech — a woman asks him what the word means and he tells her it means get away from me — and the hook applies it to men and women alike. Dictionary.com's own entry independently dates the sense to 2009 and says it apparently begins in Black slang, which matches the record exactly. The narrower dating sense, to reject an advance, hardened around 2016. The word is routinely presented in dating listicles as new Gen Z romance vocabulary; it is Harlem rap slang that arrived in those listicles seven years late.
2009
Cam'ron releases "Curve" on Crime Pays (Diplomat/Asylum, May 12), defining the word in the track's opening exchange
2016
Green's Dictionary of Slang records its earliest quotation for the sense, from The Cut — seven years after the record
2017
Gucci Mane and The Weeknd release "Curve" on Mr. Davis as the dating sense goes fully mainstream
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Harlem and New York Black speech, then nationwide · 2000s
Spoken by
Young Black speakers; carried out by Harlem rap and then by Black Twitter
$CURVEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady17 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
72/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2009
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@bxgriot
The Bronx, NY
@phillyanne
Philadelphia, PA
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Cam'ron, "Curve," from Crime Pays (Diplomat Records/Asylum), May 12, 2009
rap album track
■
Dictionary.com Slang Dictionary entry on "curve," December 4, 2018
online lexicography
■
Green's Dictionary of Slang, "curve, v." (earliest quotation 2016)
historical slang dictionary
■
+ Cite a sourceGucci Mane featuring The Weeknd, "Curve," from Mr. Davis, September 13, 2017
rap single
See also