the.com/curio
A small strange object that exists purely because someone refused to throw curiosity away.
means A small, rare, or unusual object kept for its oddity or interest rather than any practical use.
from A shortening of "curiosity," which traces back through Old French "curiosite" to the Latin "curiositas" — the state of being inquisitive — from "curiosus," "careful, eager," itself from "cura," "care." So a curio is, quite literally, a fragment of someone's curiosity, clipped short into a single keepsake — the word first hardened into this sense around the early 19th century, when cabinets of such things were all the rage.
- origin
- Short for curiosity, clipped in the 1850s
- cabinet roots
- Filled Renaissance wonder-cabinets before museums existed
- no rules
- Defined only by being odd and collectible
- value logic
- Worth equals fascination, not material
cabinet of curiosities — renaissance collections like those of the medici family in florence, containing exotic artifacts, specimens, and oddities from the 15th-17th centuries
sir john soane's museum — london house containing 40,000 objects including egyptian mummies, architectural fragments, and antiquities collected by the architect, opened 1837
pitt rivers museum — oxford university's anthropological museum displaying 500,000+ objects including shrunken heads, weapons, and ethnographic curiosities since 1884