quail
Part of speech: verb
noun
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Middle English quaylen, from Middle Dutch queilen, quēlen, from Old Dutch *quelan, from Proto-West Germanic *kwelan, from Proto-Germanic *kwelaną (“to suffer”). Doublet of queal.
Inflected forms:
form: quails
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: quailing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: quailed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: quailed
pos: verb
tags: past
form: queal
pos: verb
tags: alternative
form: quele
pos: verb
tags: alternative
form: quails
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: quail
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: To waste away; to fade, to wither.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
gloss: To daunt or frighten (someone).
pos: verb
tags: archaic
transitive
examples: Death dvvels vvithin vs, and if gentle Peace / Diſcend not ſoone, our ſorrovves to ſurceaſe, / Latium (alreadie quaild) vvill be deſtroyd.
But when he meant to quaile and shake the Orbe, / He was as ratling Thunder.
To tell the truth the prospect rather quailed him – wandering about in the gloomy corridors of a nunnery.
gloss: To lose heart or courage; to be daunted or fearful.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: 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.
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.
Stouter hearts than a woman's have quailed in this terrible winter. Yours is tender and trusting, and needs a stronger one to lean on; so I have come to you now, with an offer of marriage.
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.
His colleagues quailed when, in 1986, he first sat on the court as a brash 50-year-old whose experience had been mostly as a combative government lawyer: a justice who, in that sanctum of columns and deep judicial silence, was suddenly firing questions like grapeshot.
gloss: Of courage, faith, etc.: to slacken, to give way.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: Therewith his ſturdie corage ſoone was quayd, / And all his ſences were with ſuddein dread diſmayd.
"Sir, if you think your name is shamed by me, we had better part," said Mrs. Trevelyan, rising from her chair, and confronting him with a look before which his own almost quailed.
And he commanded his soldiers […] to frighten them with fierce swords, but the hearts of the holy men did not quail, and they were unable to alter their words.
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: Quail require little water, so there is no point to putting in a guzzler if there is any permanent water within travel range.
gloss: The meat from this bird eaten as food.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
gloss: A prostitute.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
uncountable
examples: Her's Agamemnon, an honeſt fellow inough and one that loues quailes, but hee has not ſo much braine as eare-wax, […]
Related words: partridge
bevy
Derived words: quailingly
unquailed
unquailing
banded quail
black-breasted quail
blue-breasted quail
blue quail
bobwhite quail
brown quail
bustard quail
button quail
button-quail
buttonquail
California quail
California valley quail
Canary Islands quail
common quail
dying quail
elegant quail
European quail
Gambel's quail
harlequin quail
helmet quail
Himalayan quail
Japanese quail
king quail
marsh quail
Maryland quail
masked quail
Mearns quail
migratory quail
Montezuma quail
mountain quail
New World quail
New Zealand quail
ocellated quail
Old World quail
painted quail
pectoral quail
plover quail
quail-dove
quail dove
quailer
quailery
Quailgate
quail hawk
Quail Hollow
quailish
quaillike
quail pipe
quail-pipe
quail-plover
quail-thrush
rain quail
San Quentin quail
scaled quail
sea quail
seaquail
shell quail
silver quail
singing quail
Snow Mountain quail
snow quail
stubble quail (Coturnix pectoralis
swamp quail
Tasmanian quail
tawny-faced quail
valley quail
Virginia quail
wood quail (Odontophorus spp
Translations: