Plural of cur; dogs of mixed or inferior breeding, often used as an insult to refer to mean or cowardly dogs.
From Old Norse 'kurr,' related to the sound of growling or snarling. The word originally just meant 'dog' but came to specifically mean a mongrel or inferior dog, and eventually became an insult comparing a person to a worthless dog.
In medieval literature, calling someone a 'cur' was devastatingly insulting because it compared them to a dog without breeding—a period when pedigree mattered as much for dogs as it did for nobility.
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