A curse is a solemn wish or declaration that something bad will happen to someone. In old stories and fairy tales, a witch might place a curse on a prince, turning him into a beast, or an angry sorcerer might curse a kingdom with endless winter. These magical curses create dramatic problems that heroes must solve.

The word also means a profane or offensive word, the kind that gets people in trouble when they say it around adults. When someone accidentally hits their thumb with a hammer and shouts an angry word they shouldn't, they've cursed. Parents might tell children not to curse, meaning don't use those forbidden words that show disrespect or express anger crudely.

You can also curse something in everyday speech without magic or bad words being involved. When a baseball player strikes out with the bases loaded for the tenth game in a row, fans might say a curse hangs over the team. They don't literally believe in magic, but they're expressing how unlucky something feels, like the universe itself is working against them.

Beyond these meanings, curse can describe any ongoing problem that's hard to escape. A town might suffer from the curse of having terrible cell phone service, or a student might joke about the curse of always forgetting their locker combination at the worst possible moment.