Curtus

The English word curt was not a new word to me, but it turned out that I misunderstood the meaning a little bit, because I somehow memorized it as an adjective just meaning “rude”. It was not totally wrong, but its definition is actually something like “rude as a result of being very quick” or “rudely brief”. In other words, the sense “short” was an important part of its meaning.

This is perfectly understandable because it comes from the Latin curtus, which means “short”. Curtus also has an English descendant curtail, meaning “to shorten by cutting off a part”.

The word curtus ultimately comes from the PIE *(s)ker- (to cut off). The interesting fact (to me) is that the basic English words short, shirt, and skirt all come from this origin. I can see that these words more or less have the sense “short” or “cut”.