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# curiously

«curiously» in Mova's school dictionary: **In a way that shows you want to know or learn about…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples.

### part of speech

adverb (curiously; more curiously, most curiously)

### meaning for a pupil

1) In a way that shows you want to know or learn about something: «The cat sniffed the box curiously.» [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/curiously/#m1)

2) Strangely or oddly: «The house was curiously quiet.» [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/curiously/#m2)

3) (at the start of a sentence) «Curiously, …» means «It is strange that …». [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/curiously/#m3)

### sense in the lessons

A how-word used often in stories to show a character looking or asking with interest, and to point out something odd. In Alice in Wonderland Alice looks about her curiously and famously says «Curiouser and curiouser!», a playful wrong form she made up when things got stranger and stranger.

### examples

- Alice peeped curiously into the little door. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/curiously/#x1)
- The puppy curiously sniffed the new toy. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/curiously/#x2)
- The street was curiously empty that morning. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/curiously/#x3)
- Curiously, nobody had heard the bell. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/curiously/#x4)
- She looked curiously at the strange box. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/curiously/#x5)
- The Mole asked curiously what lived in the Wild Wood. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/curiously/#x6)
- As Dorothy entered they looked at her curiously, and one of them whispered: [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/curiously/#x7)

### note

From «curious» + «-ly». Two senses: interested (looked curiously) and strangely (curiously quiet). Noun: curiosity. «Curiouser» is not correct English: it is Alice's joke from Lewis Carroll.

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «curiously» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/curiously/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.