quail
see also: Quail
Pronunciation
Quail
Proper noun
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002
see also: Quail
Pronunciation
- IPA: /ˈkweɪl/
quail (quails, present participle quailing; past and past participle quailed)
- (intransitive) To waste#Verb|waste away; to fade#Verb|fade, to wither [from 15th c.]
- (transitive, now, rare) To daunt or frighten (someone) [from 16th c.]
- c. 1606–1607, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act V, scene ii], page 365 ↗, column 2:
- But when he meant to quaile and shake the Orbe, / He was as ratling Thunder.
- 1978, Lawrence Durrell, Livia: or, Buried Alive: A Novel, London; Boston, Mass.: Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-11297-5; republished in The Avignon Quintet, London: Faber, published 1992, ISBN 978-0-571-16328-1, page 358:
- To tell the truth the prospect rather quailed him – wandering about in the gloomy corridors of a nunnery.
- (intransitive) To lose heart or courage; to be daunted#Adjective|daunted or fearful. [from 16th c.]
- 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, “A Quarrel about an Heiress”, in Vanity Fair. A Novel without a Hero, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, OCLC 3174108 ↗, page 183 ↗:
- Though George had stopped in his sentence, yet, his blood being up, he was not to be cowed by all the generations of Osborne; rallying instantly, he replied to the bullying look of his father, with another so indicative of resolution and defiance, that the elder man quailed in his turn, and looked away.
- 1886 January 4, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Carew Murder Case”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., OCLC 762755901 ↗, page 39 ↗:
- Mr. Utterson had already quailed at the name of Hyde; but when the stick was laid before him, he could doubt no longer: broken and battered as it was, he recognized it for one that he had himself presented many years before to Henry Jekyll.
- 1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 2, in Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, OCLC 690663892 ↗; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001, part 1, page 27 ↗:
- The sun had shifted round, and the myriad windows of the Ministry of Truth, with the light no longer shining on them, looked grim as the loopholes of a fortress. His heart quailed before the enormous pyramidal shape. It was too strong, it could not be stormed.
- (intransitive) Of courage, faith, etc.: to slacken, to give way. [from 16th c.]
- 1869 May, Anthony Trollope, “Hard Words”, in He Knew He Was Right, volume (
please specify ), London: Strahan and Company, publishers, […], OCLC 1118026626 ↗, page 77 ↗:
- Russian: пасова́ть
quail (plural quails)
- Any of various small game birds of the genera Coturnix, Anurophasis or Perdicula in the Old World family Phasianidae or of the New World family Odontophoridae.
- (uncountable) The meat from this bird eaten as food.
- (obsolete) A prostitute, so called because the quail was thought to be a very amorous bird.
- French: caille, caille des blés
- German: Wachtel
- Italian: quaglia
- Portuguese: codorna, codorniz
- Russian: пе́репел
- Spanish: codorniz
quail (quails, present participle quailing; past and past participle quailed)
Quail
Proper noun
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002