quail

present singular third person quails · participle present quailing · participle past quailed · past quailed · alternative queal · alternative quele

1. intransitiveTo waste away; to fade, to wither.First known use 15th c.
2. archaictransitiveTo daunt or frighten (someone).First known use 16th c.

   But when he meant to quaile and shake the Orbe, / He was as ratling Thunder.

   c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii], page 365, column 2

   2 more examples

   Death dvvels vvithin vs, and if gentle Peace / Diſcend not ſoone, our ſorrovves to ſurceaſe, / Latium (alreadie quaild) vvill be deſtroyd.

   1594, Robert Garnier, translated by Thomas Kid [i.e., Thomas Kyd], Pompey the Great, His Faire Corneliaes Tragedie: […], London: […] [James Roberts] for Nicholas Ling, published 1595, →OCLC, act I, signature B, verso

   To tell the truth the prospect rather quailed him – wandering about in the gloomy corridors of a nunnery.

   1978, Lawrence Durrell, Livia: or, Buried Alive: A Novel, London; Boston, Mass.: Faber and Faber; republished in The Avignon Quintet, London: Faber, published 1992, page 358

3. intransitiveTo lose heart or courage; to be daunted or fearful.First known use 16th c.

   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.

   1904, Seymour S. Tibbals, The Puritans or The Captain of Plymouth: A Comic Opera in Three Acts, [Franklin, Oh.]: Seymour S. Tibbals, →OCLC, act II, scene i, page 13

   4 more 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.

   1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, “A Quarrel about an Heiress”, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 183

   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.

   1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Carew Murder Case”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 39

   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.

   1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 2, in Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001, part 1, page 27

   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.

   2016 February 20, “Obituary: Antonin Scalia: Always right”, in The Economist

4. intransitiveOf courage, faith, etc.: to slacken, to give way.First known use 16th c.

   Therewith his ſturdie corage ſoone was quayd, / And all his ſences were with ſuddein dread diſmayd.

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 14, page 108

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   "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.

   1869 May, Anthony Trollope, “Hard Words”, in He Knew He Was Right, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Strahan and Company, […], →OCLC, page 77

   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.

   1928, E. A. Wallis Budge, transl., The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church[:] A translation of the Ethiopic Synaxarium […] , volume 1, London: Cambridge University Press, page 220

plural quails

1. countableuncountableAny 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.

   Quail require little water, so there is no point to putting in a guzzler if there is any permanent water within travel range.

   1954, Wildlife Review, numbers 75-83, page 44

2. uncountableThe meat from this bird eaten as food.
3. countableobsoleteuncountableA prostitute.

   Her's Agamemnon, an honeſt fellow inough and one that loues quailes, but hee has not ſo much braine as eare-wax, […]

   c. 1602, William Shakespeare, The Famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid. Excellently Expressing the Beginning of their Loues, with the Conceited Wooing of Pandarus, Prince of Licia, London: Imprinted by G[eorge] Eld for R[ichard] Bonian and H[enry] Walley, and are to be sold at the spred Eagle in Paules Church-yeard, ouer against the great North doore, published 1609, →OCLC, act V, scene 1

1. A surname from Scottish Gaelic.