Other forms: curios
A curio is a small unusual object kept for its oddity. A shelf of curios, a curio shop, an odd little curio.
It is valued for being strange rather than beautiful or useful, which is what separates it from an ornament. The cabinet of curiosities was the ancestor of the museum, where wonders were gathered without any system. The word is a shortening of curiosity, from 1851.
1nouncurioA small unusual object kept for its oddity.
“The antique shop was crammed with curios, like a stuffed owl and a ship in a bottle.”
curio is an odd object.
A clipping of curiosity, from 1851, from Latin curiosus, careful or inquisitive, from cura, care.
a clipping of curiosity, 1851. Compare cabinet of curiosities and French objet de curiosité.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA