It’s KERB! If you mean the thing between the road and the pavement.

[GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER]

Unless you’re American, anyway.
‘Curb’ means ‘restrict’.

Hmm, I lived in America a long time but I’m British, is it ok if I use kurb?

If you want, but kurb isn’t a word in the English language at all. (It means sad in Estonian apparently).

When in Rome.

If 'curb' means restrict, surely a kerb restricts a road from intruding on to the path at the side of the road. The kerb curbs the road. I was born in the middle of the twentieth century and I always used kerb for that thing at the edge of a pavement but some time in the late 1980s or early 1990s I saw the minutes of a parish council meeting in England, from, I think, the beginning of the 1900s, and I read 'curb' used in exactly the same way as I would use 'kerb'. So now, for me, either is acceptable. What were the English English writing in 1850? Is it one of those words which went over there and they kept and we in the UK changed?

OP, where have you seen it? Road sign in the UK? On social media?

If Shakespeare were alive now, he would invent 'kurb'.

It was wrong in that case because of the ignorance of whoever wrote it.

For some reason this annoys me as well. I keep seeing it everywhere.

Seeing curb appeal on here and even worse on actual estate agent’s details drives me nuts! It’s KERB appeal 😤

This drives me nuts too. If it refers to the roadside edge of the footpath then it is KERB, unless you are in the US, where the footpath would be the sidewalk and would have a curb.

Otherwise yes, curb does mean restrict.

That’s not even a word so no.

That's a mouthful! (Or maybe a footfall... 🤔)

Well you learn something everyday.

So 'Curb' is word in (english) english, but it means restrict?

I thought that the word for the thing at the edge of the road was 'Curb' precisely because that things 'restricts' the road traffic.

Hva ebeen lbouring under that for years.

I’m happy to concede my ‘kurb’ comment wasn’t as hilarious as it could have been but I’m suprised that quite so many pedants took it seriously. 💁🏻‍♀️

I thought it was funny. But then I’m not a pedant. Just pedant adjacent. Pedants are the King Canute of the linguistic world. Give me the gorgeous ocean of language, fed by many streams, any day.

I thought it was funny!

In Northumberland, it is a small boy who washes your car during bob a job week.

I’m in Scotland where ‘kerb’ and ‘curb’ are pronounced completely differently and would never be confused.

No you gotta talk and write proper innit

Actually both ‘curb’ and ‘kerb’ are correct when referring to the pavement / road buffer, so the whole thread is full of holes to start with I’m afraid. 🤷‍♂️

But I’ll give you a B+ for effort 👍

Curb is American English, kerb is British English according to the OED.

As a Scot like @Sevenamcoffee we pronounce ‘e’ and ‘u’ entirely differently anyway.

My Chambers 20th Century Dictionary (reprint 1978) says that curb and kerb are both fine, but kerb is more commonly used for the pavement edge and also lists kerbstone, kerb-crawling and kerbside as examples.

I'm going to plump for kerb for the edging, and curb for everything else.

I’ve always called it a kerbstone

Frenare...

Or, for kerb, il cordone del marciapiede