Library / English Dictionary

CURIOUSLY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (adverb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

In a manner differing from the usual or expected

Example:

he's behaving rather peculiarly

Synonyms:

curiously; inexplicably; oddly; peculiarly

Classified under:

Adverbs

Pertainym:

curious (beyond or deviating from the usual or expected)

Sense 2

Meaning:

With curiosity

Example:

the baby looked around curiously

Synonyms:

curiously; inquisitively; interrogatively

Classified under:

Adverbs

Pertainym:

curious (eager to investigate and learn or learn more (sometimes about others' concerns))

Credits

 Context examples: 

He cocked his ears and watched it curiously.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Lord John had been gazing curiously at a great tree-fern which overshadowed the encampment.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The voice of Mrs. Fairfax, speaking to a servant in the hall, wakened you: and how curiously you smiled to and at yourself, Janet!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I asked her, and looked curiously at her, because she looked so curiously at me.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But she glanced curiously from time to time into the dark corner where he sat.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

She advanced and examined it closely: it was of cedar, curiously inlaid with some darker wood, and raised, about a foot from the ground, on a carved stand of the same.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

She was left with limited means, but with some very remarkable old Spanish jewellery of silver and curiously cut diamonds to which she was fondly attached—too attached, for she refused to leave them with her banker and always carried them about with her.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Then I came to a long thicket of these oaklike trees—live, or evergreen, oaks, I heard afterwards they should be called—which grew low along the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously twisted, the foliage compact, like thatch.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Her hair of a shining raven black, and curiously braided; her eyes were dark, but gentle, although animated; her features of a regular proportion, and her complexion wondrously fair, each cheek tinged with a lovely pink.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

He laid down his pen and looked curiously at him.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)