The most common and most likely answer to this crossword clue is the 8 letter word RESTRICT
I've seen this crossword clue in Financial Times
R
E
S
T
R
I
C
T
More clues leading to the result RESTRICT
- Limit soldiers enforced stringently
- Put limits on dress, strip clothing off before court
- Curtail support, internal scheme being inadequate
- Hesitation over standing by exact limit
- Put limit on devious trickster when thousand goes missing
- Confine engineers near stern
- Area rejecting outsiders with hard-and-fast limit
- Prop strained audibly getting control
- Regularly urge stringent limit
- Confine the poor critters
Buddy explains!
The straight part
We know that "Curtail" is the straight/definition part of the clue. The straight part is often a synonym or definition, in this case curtail = restrict.The cryptic/wordplay part
In cryptic crossword there's often an wordplay/cryptic part as well.This part involves a more complex hint, such as an anagram, homophone, hidden word, etc.
Sadly, We don't have an explanation for this specific crossword clue yet.
What does RESTRICT mean?
RESTRICT verb- To restrain within boundaries; to limit; to confine
- (specifically) To consider (a function) as defined on a subset of its original domain.
- Restricted.