Definition of "curate"

“Here, Pat, give us a g.p., like a good fellow.” The curate brought him a glass of plain porter. The man drank it at a gulp and asked for a caraway seed. He put his penny on the counter and, leaving the curate to grope for it in the gloom, retreated out of the snug as furtively as he had entered it.

1914 June, James Joyce, “Counterparts”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards, page 107

What I love about DVRs is that they really allow you to curate your experience of television.

2007 May 16, “TV Networks Woo Advertisers with Fall Line-Up”, in NPR_TalkNation

During the past five years I had the good fortune to be editor of Poetry Northwest. The magazine's mission includes curating a dialogue between poetry, the other arts, and civic life.

2010 May, David Biespiel, “This Land Is Our Land”, in Poetry, volume 196, number 2, pages 151–158

To grasp how this all works, think of the concepts of editing and curating, adopted from publishing and art but now used constantly in the fashion world to imply judgment, taste and discernment.

2010 November 28, Laura Compton, “Shopping sites redefine fashion”, in San Francisco Chronicle, Style, page G1

From there, click the Notifications tab and scroll down to Groups. This will bring up a page that allows you to curate what sort of Group-related activity results in e-mail alerts.

2011 February, Seth Porges, “Digital Clinic”, in Popular Mechanics, volume 188, number 2, page 105

Sometimes, you just want to shop for the pure joy of looking at cool things. And the app for Fab, a curated shopping site, is just the place to do that.

2012 June 10, “TechBits: Fab lets you shop, if not sort”, in Washington Post

The line between reporter and reader will blur as a growing number of people create, curate, and circulate content.

2014, Astra Taylor, chapter 3, in The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, Henry Holt and Company

Contemporary curating has become an absurdity. Outfits are curated. Salads are curated. Twitter feeds are curated. Bennington College in Vermont invites prospective students to curate their applications.

2015 April 18, David Balzer, “‘Reading lists, outfits, even salads are curated – it’s absurd’”, in The Guardian‎

Unlike some top American actors, who carefully curate heroic roles, the British actor relishes swimming in moral murkiness, “the gray areas where you can’t easily put a definition.”

2022 October 22, Maureen Dowd, “Ralph Fiennes, Master of Monsters”, in The New York Times‎