Pronouncing words like Cursed as "Cur-suhd" instead of "Curs'd"

The way I was raised, several (maybe many?) of these kinds of words are pronounced -èd *if* (and only if) they are used as adjectives. Words I pronounce like this (because my parents, and others, pronounced them that way): *blessèd*; *cursèd*; *accursèd*; *belovèd*; *supposèd*; *allegèd*; *wingèd*; *crownèd*. There are probably more. I'll add them if I think of 'em. Of course to these can be added *wicked* and *naked*, which everyone pronounces that way. Saying "I am bless'd" and "I am blessèd" mean very different things: The first means you have received a blessing; the second means you are God's gift to the world. The same would go for *curs'd* and *cursèd*: "I am curs'd" means you happen to have a curse on you; "I am cursèd" means you are fundamentally sullied by a curse or curses, and are likely a danger to others.

One source is poetic verse, where the meter might demand the emphàsis on a different syllàble. It’s called diaeresis. “Cursèd” is traditionally how the disyllabic pronunciation is transcribed. Lots of words can be altered in this way, I’m not aware of any hard and fast rules but it helps that cursed has a long history of both pronunciations and breaks nicely into two syllables. Winged, beloved, learned are common candidates. I wouldn’t try it with eg yeetèd unless I was being silly, but odd ones makèd are not uncommon. Anything to make the verse scan, I suppose.

As a verb, I've always been taught that it should be one syllable. I learned, cursed, blessed. As an adjective, I usually use two syllables, but if we already have a bit of context I tend to use one syllable. The learned people, the cursed child, the blessed women, my beloved family. I guess it gives emphasis or makes it easier to understand the first time you use it. Like my friend bought a cur-sed bag from the thrift shop. I tell you that bag was cursd! If I use it as a noun, I always use it with two syllables. The cur-sed. The belo-ved. The lear-ned. The bless-ed. I guess it's just the way I learned it from my grandma 😂

There are some words that you see more in poetry to make sure things flow seamlessly which is why you sometimes see cursèd or curs’d. I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to guess that cursèd is an old fashioned way of saying cursed and that because of time and speed it dropped down to being curs’d. But as you said it is more dramatic. It is meant to be a focus. In this case cursèd means that the first quarter of 2020 was the worst thing that’s even happened and everyone knows why. It was COVID.

I picked up the pronunciation, and understood it as archaic, used in old movies and biblical contexts….but also used by the British in contemporary times?…I grew up in deep southern USA and even talking that way to denote adjectives I don’t think is really used down here

It’s like a funny old fashioned way of saying it. They are being funny by speaking in a shakespearean way.

This is very common in poetry (getting Shakespeare to rhyme correctly is probably one of the most common places this is done), but I've never heard anyone speaking that way normally.

As a verb it has one syllable. He cursed all through dinner. As an adjective it has two syllables. This cursed computer just crashed for the hundredth time today! This is called syllabic expansion and often happens to mark the same word used as different parts of speech to fulfill different functions.

Reminds me on Trivium's ' Entrance of the Conflagration' where he sings 'cur-suhd' with two syllables

Two pronunciations of the same word. You’ll hear cursed vs curs-ed in nearly every situation. Curs-ed tends to be more poetic or in cinema to add a little layer of flavor.

This reminds me of a time when I was in church as a teen. A missionary from Paraguay, Dr. Ben, was here in Baltimore for a year because he was learning certain types of brain surgery at Johns Hopkins, so he could go home and perform them and teach them. He came to my church as his home church for the time he was here. One Sunday, he was speaking to the congregation about Jesus on the cross, and he mentioned that all paintings and depictions had some sort of cloth covering Him for modesty. However, the Bible describes Christ as naked. But since Dr. Ben's first language is Spanish, not English, he pronounced naked as one syllable, as if it rhymed with baked. He repeated this several times. I held in my chuckles as best I could. 😂

It's usually written with an 'è', especially in 19th century work- words like "blessèd", "belovèd". It's acceptable either way, but you might sound a bit like a Romantic poet or a hymnist.

The longer pronunciation is used as an adjective. “Curs’d” is the verb pronunciation. They’re spelled the same, yeah.

Today I learned /ˈlɝːnd/ that my learned /ˈlɜː.nɪd/ friend also speaks Greek. The past tense of the verb *learn* is *learned*. Both are one syllable. When you use *learned* as an adjective to describe a person who has learned a lot, the word has two syllables. The same pattern exists for lots of word. I cursed (one syllable) my luck that I ever came to this cursed (two syllables) town. Dearly beloved (two syllables), we are here to say good-bye to a beloved (two syllables) author.

It’s a conjugation used by some English speakers to differentiate a simple past tense verb (-ed) from an adjective (-èd). In the modern day, their application in speech and writing is inconsistent among native speakers, although some early modern English writers like Shakespeare used them consistently.

In addition or related to what many are saying, and the way I think it was meant here, it is used sometimes by people with a very particular sense of humor to give some winking melodramatic flair to a spoken line by deliberately pronounce it “cur-suhd” (as you put it, actually “cursèd”) when ordinarily it would be “curs’d,” specifically to evoke the feeling of those old poems in verse. By calling it the “cursèd first quarter of 2020,” the person meant to evoke the air of a bard recounting tales of the plague. So to speak.