incurious

English

Etymology

From Latin incūriōsus (“careless”), from in- (“un-”) and cūriōsus (“careful”). Attested since the 1560s, originally meaning ‘heedless and negligent.’ The sense of ‘uninquisitive’ dates from the 1610s, and the sense of ‘unworthy of attention’ from 1747.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

incurious (comparative more incurious, superlative most incurious)

1. Lacking interest or curiosity; uninterested.
   • 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVI, in Romance and Reality. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 233:

     A genuine Londoner is the most incurious animal in nature. Divide your acquaintance into two parts; the one set will never have seen Westminster Abbey—the other will be equally ignorant of St. Paul's.

   • 2019 September 3, David Karpf, “Bret Stephens Compared Me to a Nazi Propagandist in the New York Times. It Proved My Point.”, in Esquire‎^[1]:

     It takes an extraordinarily incurious mind to believe, in 2019, that the most vulnerable populations online are moderate Republicans like himself, given what women and people of color who dare to participate in public discourse routinely face.

2. Apathetic or indifferent.

Translations

lacking curiosity

• French: incurieux (fr)
• Greek: απερίεργος (el) (aperíergos)