- 1
To curtail something is to cut it down or put a limit on it, so there is less of it than before, or it cannot go as far as planned. A city might curtail water use in a dry summer. A school might curtail break time. Illness can curtail a trip. The word is a bit formal; in everyday talk people usually say cut, reduce, limit, or . It is almost always about making an activity, a right, or an amount smaller — not about cutting a physical thing with scissors.
縮減、限制（讓某件事變少或不能再擴大）
組成An alteration of older curtal, from Old French courtault (“which has been shortened”), from court (“short”, from Latin curtus) + -ault.
同家族的字
- curtsame Latin curtus, “shortened”
- curtailmentthe noun: the cut or limit itself
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
curtailverb/kɜːˈteɪl/
- 1
obsoleteTo cut short the tail of (an animal).
- Curtailing horses procured long horse-hair.
- 2
To shorten or abridge the duration of; to bring an end to; to truncate.
- When the audience grew restless, the speaker curtailed her speech.
- Although British involvement in the slave trade prior to 1807 cannot be denied, or its effects diminished, it is also a fact that the Royal Navy was pretty much the only force in the world in the 19th century with the numbers, drive, willingness, firepower, and capability to curtail the global slave trade, and that, without these efforts, many more would no doubt have been taken to slave plantations and other such destinations during the 19th, and possibly even into the 20th, centuries, as it must be remembered that a great many European powers would only begrudgingly commit to ending the slave trade when the other option was continuous war with the British Empire.
- 3
To limit or restrict; to keep in check.
- This is the rump of the C.L.C. branch to Southport Lord Street, which lost its passenger services beyond Aintree from January 7, 1952, whereupon the timetable between Gateacre and Aintree was greatly curtailed.
- The current Israeli government has been working to curtail and eliminate critical voices within Israeli society in recent years, particularly those fighting to end the occupation and expose human rights violations against Palestinians and marginalized communities.
curtailnoun/kɜːˈteɪl/
- 1
architectureA scroll termination, as of a step, etc.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。