reverse curve

American

noun

an S -shaped curve, as on highways and railroad tracks, produced by the joining of two curves that turn in opposite directions.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

“Usually it happens the day of and it declines, and by a week after nobody’s talking about it. In this case, it had a reverse curve.”

From Washington Post

"You would think that it would have the greatest impact on my life close to the event. But it's like a reverse curve. The further away from it I get, it seems, the more it's impacting me."

From Reuters

Meanwhile, in a separate show at the Gagosian outpost at 522 West 21st Street, the entire space will be given over to a single Brobdingnagian sculpture — “Reverse Curve,” back-to-back plates that form an S-shape and wind, riverlike, for 99 feet.

From New York Times

Passenger train 41 derailed near Venice while running around a reverse curve fifty miles an hour.

From Project Gutenberg

Basically a reverse curve, it is thrown regularly by only two pitchers in the National League besides Marichal�Cincinnati's Jack Baldschun and Atlanta's Chi-Chi Olivo.

From Time Magazine Archive

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023