Cu·ri·ous a.
 1. Difficult to please or satisfy; solicitous to be correct; careful; scrupulous; nice; exact. [Obs.]
    Little curious in her clothes.   --Fuller.
 How shall we,
 If he be curious, work upon his faith?   --Beau. & Fl.
 2. Exhibiting care or nicety; artfully constructed; elaborate; wrought with elegance or skill.
    To devise curious works.   --Ex. xxxv. 32
    His body couched in a curious bed.   --Shak.
 3. Careful or anxious to learn; eager for knowledge; given to research or inquiry; habitually inquisitive; prying; -- sometimes with after or of.
    It is a pity a gentleman so very curious after things that were elegant and beautiful should not have been as curious as to their origin, their uses, and their natural history.   --Woodward.
 4. Exciting attention or inquiry; awakening surprise; inviting and rewarding inquisitiveness; not simple or plain; strange; rare. “Acurious tale”
    A multitude of curious analogies.   --Macaulay.
    Many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.   --E. A. Poe.
    Abstruse investigations in recondite branches of learning or sciense often bring to light curious results.   --C. J. Smith.
 Curious arts, magic. [Obs.]
    Many . . . which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them.   --Acts xix. 19.
 Syn: -- Inquisitive; prying. See Inquisitive.
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 Curious arts
    (Acts 19:19), magical arts; jugglery practised by the Ephesian
    conjurers. Ephesus was noted for its wizard and the "Ephesian
    spells;" i.e., charms or scraps of parchment written over with
    certain formula, which were worn as a safeguard against all
    manner of evils. The more important and powerful of these charms
    were written out in books which circulated among the exorcists,
    and were sold at a great price.