curse: [OE] Curse first appeared in late Old English (in the early 11th century) as curs. It has no known linguistic relatives, and it is not clear where it comes from. Perhaps the most plausible suggestion is that it was borrowed from Old French curuz ‘anger’ (which probably came from the verb *corruptiāre, a Vulgar Latin derivative of Latin corrumpere ‘destroy’ – source of English corrupt), and that curse itself therefore originally meant ‘anger, wrath’. The colloquial alteration cuss dates from the 18th century. => corrupt, rupture
