currying

English

WOTD – 12 September 2026

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkʌɹiɪŋ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈkʌɹiɪŋ/, /ˈkɜ-/

• Audio (General American); /ˈkɜɹiɪŋ/:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: cur‧ry‧ing

Etymology 1

Etymology tree

English Curry

English curry

Proto-Indo-European *-h₂

Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂

Proto-Indo-European *-yéti

Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti

Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ti

Proto-Germanic *-ōną

Proto-Germanic *-gō

Proto-Germanic *-ōngō?

Proto-Germanic *-ungō

Old English -ung

Middle English -ynge

English -ing

English currying

From curry (“to perform currying upon (a function, a parameter, etc.)”, verb) + -ing (suffix forming nouns denoting acts of doing actions or embodiments of actions). Curry is named after the American computer scientist and mathematician Haskell Curry (1900–1982) who further developed the technique based on earlier work by the German logician and mathematician Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) and the Germany-based Russian logician and mathematician Moses Schönfinkel (1888–1942). It is not known who coined the term.

Noun

currying (countable and uncountable, plural curryings)

1. (computing) gerund of curry: (uncountable) the technique of converting a function that takes multiple arguments into a sequence of functions that each take a single argument; (countable) an instance of using this technique.

   Antonym: uncurrying

   • 1972 August 1, John C[harles] Reynolds, “Definitional Interpreters for Higher-order Programming Languages”, in Rosemary Shields, editor, ACM ’72: Proceedings of the ACM Annual Conference, volume 2, [New York, N.Y.]: ACM Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 725:

     In the last line [of the preceding function] we have used a trick called Currying (after the logician H. Curry) to solve the problem of introducing a binary operation into a language where all functions must accept a single argument. (The referee comments that although "Currying" is tastier, "Schönfinkeling" might be more accurate.)

   • 1985, P[ierre]-L[ouis] Curien, “Syntactic Equivalences Inducing Semantic Equivalences”, in Bob F. Caviness, editor, Eurocal ’85: European Conference on Computer Algebra, Linz, Austria, April 1–3 1985: Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 204), volume 2 (Research Contributions), Berlin; Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg: Springer-Verlag, →ISBN, page 174:

     The pure categorical combinatory logic CCL is the one-sorted algebra of terms built from a set $Var$ of variables over the following signature: […] $\mathrm{\Lambda }$, called curryiing,^[sic] of arity 1 […]

   • 2004, Yoshihito Toyama, “Termination of S-Expression Rewriting Systems: Lexicographic Path Ordering for Higher-Order Terms”, in Vincent van Oostrom, editor, Rewriting Techniques and Applications: 15th International Conference, RTA 2004, Aachen, Germany, June 3–5, 2004: Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 3091), Berlin; Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg: Springer-Verlag, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 53:

     Take two curryings ${\mathrm{\Gamma }}_1((N\times N\to N)\times (N\times N\to N)\times L\to L))=(N\times N\to N)\times (N\times N\to N)\to (L\to L)$ and ${\mathrm{\Gamma }}_2((N\times N\to N)\times (N\times N\to N)\times L\times N\to L))=(N\times N\to N)\times (N\times N\to N)\to (L\times N\to L)$. Currying $ℛ$ twice, we have the following curried SRS [S-expression rewriting system] ${\mathrm{\Gamma }}_2({\mathrm{\Gamma }}_1(ℛ))$.

   • 2010, Sal Mangano, “Functional Programming”, in Mike Loukides, editor, Mathematica Cookbook, Sebastopol, Calif.: O’Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 74:

     Currying is the process of transforming a function that takes multiple arguments into a function that takes just a single argument and returns another function if any arguments are still needed.

   • 2011, Cynthia Kop, “Simplifying Algebraic Functional Systems”, in Franz Winkler, editor, Algebraic Informatics: 4th International Conference, CAI 2011, Linz, Austria, June 21–24, 2011: Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 6742), Berlin; Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg: Springer-Verlag, →DOI, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 212:

     In first-order rewriting, the question whether properties such as confluence and termination are preserved under currying or uncurrying is studied in [5,6,2]. In [6] a currying transformation from (functional) term rewriting systems (TRSs) into applicative term rewriting systems (ATRSs) is defined; a TRS is terminating if and only if its curried form is.

   • 2015 August 4, Paul-André Mellies, Noam Zeilberger, “An Isbell Duality Theorem for Type Refinement Systems”, in ArXiv, →DOI, →OCLC, page 21; published in Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, volume 28, number 6, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, June 2018, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, pages 736–774:

     In the case of a logical refinement system $t:𝒟\to 𝒯$ with enough pullbacks, the fiber ${𝒟}_w$ is not just monoidal, but also closed […], with the residuals defined by pulling back along the left and right curryings of the monoid multiplication map: […]

Derived terms

• uncurrying

Related terms

• curried (adjective)
• curry
• uncurried (adjective)
• uncurry

Translations

technique of converting a function that takes multiple arguments into a sequence of functions that each take a single argument; an instance of using this technique

• Arabic: التكرير ?
• Catalan: currificació ?
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 加里化 (jiālǐhuà), 卡瑞化 (kǎruìhuà), 柯里化 (kēlǐhuà)

• Finnish: Curry-muunnos
• French: curryfication (fr) f
• German: Currying n, Schönfinkeln n
• Hebrew: פונקציית קורי ?
• Italian: applicazione parziale f
• Japanese: カリー化 (カリーか, karīka)
• Korean: 커링 (keoring)
• Polish: rozwijanie funkcji f
• Portuguese: currying ?
• Russian: каррирование (ru) n (karrirovanije)
• Spanish: currificación ?
• Ukrainian: каррінг ? (karrinh), каррування ? (karruvannja)

Etymology 2

Etymology tree

Tamil கறி (kaṟi)bor.

English currey

Middle English curyinflu.

English curry

Proto-Indo-European *-onts

Proto-Germanic *-andz

Proto-West Germanic *-andī

Old English -ende

▲

Middle English -yngeinflu.

Middle English -ynge

English -ing

English currying

From curry (“to cook or season (a dish) with curry powder”, verb) + -ing (suffix forming present participles of verbs).

Verb

currying

1. present participle and gerund of curry.

Etymology 3

Etymology tree

English curry

Proto-Indo-European *-onts

Proto-Germanic *-andz

Proto-West Germanic *-andī

Old English -ende

▲

Middle English -yngeinflu.

Middle English -ynge

English -ing

English currying

From curry (“to groom (a horse)”, verb) + -ing (suffix forming present participles of verbs).

Verb

currying

1. present participle and gerund of curry.

Further reading

• currying on Wikipedia.Wikipedia