Q

quack English has two words quack. The one denoting the call of a duck [17] originated of course as an imitation of the sound itself. Quack ‘person claiming to be a doctor’ [17] is short for an earlier quacksalver, which etymologically denoted ‘someone who prattles on or boasts about the efficacy of his remedies’. It was borrowed from early modern Dutch quacksalver, a compound formed from the now obsolete quacken ‘chatter, prattle’ and salf, the Dutch relative of English salve.

quad see QUARTER

quagmire [16] The now virtually defunct word quag denoted a ‘marsh’, particularly one with a top layer of turf that moved when you trod on it. Combination with mire (which also originally meant ‘marsh’, and is related to English moss) produced quagmire. It is not known where quag came from, but its underlying meaning is generally taken to be ‘shake, tremble’, and it may ultimately be of imitative origin.

quail Quail the bird [14] and quail ‘cower’ [15] are not related. The former comes via Old French quaille from medieval Latin coacula, which probably originated in imitation of the bird’s grating cry. It is not known for certain where the verb (which originally meant ‘decline, wither, give way’) came from, although some have linked it with another verb quail, now obsolete, which meant ‘curdle’. This came via Old French quailler from Latin cogulre, source of English coagulate.

COAGULATE

quaint [13] Quaint was once a more wholehearted term of approval than it is now. In Middle English it meant ‘clever’ or ‘finely or skilfully made’. Its current sense ‘pleasantly curious’ did not emerge until the 18th century. It comes via Old French coint from Latin cognitus ‘known’, the past participle of cognscere ‘know’ (source of English recognize). The word’s meaning evolved in Old French via the notion of someone who ‘knows’ about something, and hence is an expert at it or is skilful in doing it.

COGNITION, RECOGNIZE

quality [13] The ultimate source of quality is Latin qulis ‘of what sort?’, a compound pronoun formed from qu‘who’ and the adjectival suffix -lis. From it were derived the noun qulits, source of English quality, and qulificre, from which English gets qualify [16].

QUALIFY

quandary [16] Quandary may have originated as a quasi-latinism. One of its early forms was quandare, which suggests that it may have been a pseudo-Latin infinitive verb, coined on the fanciful notion that Latin quand‘when’ was a first person present singular form.

quango [20] Quango is an acronym created probably in the late 1960s to refer, in a none too complimentary way, to an administrative body hovering in the grey area between public accountability and private control. It is commonly explained as being based on the initial letters of quasi-autonomous national government organization, but there is no actual evidence for that unwieldy phrase before the mid-1970s, by which time the acronym was already going strong. A more plausible source is the simpler quasi-nongovernmental organization, which was around in the late 1960s.

quantity [14] Latin quantus meant ‘how much’ (it was a compound adjective formed from qu‘who’). From it was derived the noun quantitas ‘extent, amount’, which passed into English via Old French quantite. Quantum [17], a noun use of the neuter form of the Latin adjective, originally denoted simply ‘amount’; its specific application to a ‘minimum amount of matter’ was introduced by Max Planck in 1900, and reinforced by Einstein in 1905.

QUANTUM

quarantine [17] Quarantine denotes etymologically a period of ‘forty’ days. It goes back ultimately to Latin quadrgint ‘forty’, whose Italian descendant quaranta formed the basis of the noun quarantina ‘period of forty days’. English used it originally for a ‘period of forty days’ isolation’, but gradually the stipulation of the number of days faded out.

QUARTER

quark [20] The term quark was applied to a type of fundamental particle by its discoverer, the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann. He seems first to have used quork, but then he remembered quark, a nonsense word used by James Joyce in Finnegan’s Wake 1939, and he decided to plump for that. It first appeared in print in 1964.

quarrel English has two words quarrel, one of them now little more than a historical memory. Quarrel ‘argument’ [14] goes back via Old French querele to Latin querla, a derivative of quer ‘complain’. Also based on quer was querulus ‘complaining’, from which English gets querulous [15]. Quarrel ‘crossbow arrow’ [13] comes via Old French quarel from Vulgar Latin *quadrellus, a diminutive form of late Latin quadrus ‘square’ (the quarrel had a ‘square’ head). And quadrus was based on the stem quadr- ‘four’, source of English quadrangle, quadrant, quadruped, etc.

QUERULOUS; QUARTER

quarry Quarry from which stone is extracted [15] and quarry which one hunts [14] are quite different words. The former was borrowed from Old French quarriere, a derivative of *quarre ‘square stone’. This went back to Latin quadrum ‘square’, which was based on the stem quadr-‘four’, source of English quadrangle, quadrant, quadruped, etc. The sort of quarry that is pursued came from Anglo-Norman *quire or *quere, which denoted ‘entrails of a killed deer given to the hounds to eat’. This went back to Old French cuiree, which was an alteration of an earlier couree or coree. And this in turn was descended from Vulgar Latin *corta ‘entrails’, a derivative of Latin cor ‘heart’. The present-day sense of the English word emerged in the 15th century.

QUARTER; CORDIAL, COURAGE, RECORD

quarter [13] Quarter is one of a large family of English words that go back ultimately to Latin quattuor ‘four’ and its relatives. Direct descendants of quattuor itself are actually fairly few – among them quatrain [16] and quatrefoil [15] (both via Old French). But its ordinal form qurtus ‘fourth’ has been most prolific: English is indebted to it for quart [14], quarter (via the Latin derivative quartrius ‘fourth part’), quartet [18], and quarto [16]. In compounds quattuor assumed the form quadr-, which has given English quadrangle [15] (and its abbreviation quad [19]), quadrant [14], quadratic [17], quadrille [18], quadruped [17], quadruplet [18] (also abbreviated to quad [19]), quarantine, quarrel ‘arrow’, not to mention the more heavily disguised cadre [19], carfax [14] (which means etymologically ‘four-forked’), squad, and square. And the derivative quater ‘four times’ has contributed carillon [18] (etymologically a peal of ‘four’ bells), quaternary [15], and quire of paper [15] (etymologically a set of ‘four’ sheets of paper).

CADRE, CARFAX, CARILLON, QUAD, QUARREL, QUARRY, QUIRE, SQUAD, SQUARE

quash [14] Quash goes back ultimately to Latin quatere ‘shake’ (source also of English rescue [14], which etymologically means ‘shake off, drive away’, and of concussion and percussion). From it evolved quassre ‘shake to pieces, break’, which passed into Old French as quasser (its modern descendant is casser, from which English gets cashier ‘dismiss from the army’). English took quasser over as quash. Squash [16] comes ultimately from the Vulgar Latin derivative *exquassre.

CONCUSSION, PERCUSSION, RESCUE, SQUASH

quaver [15] Quaver was derived from an earlier and now obsolete Middle English quave ‘tremble’. This was of Germanic origin (Low German has the related quabbeln ‘tremble’), and probably started life as a vocal realization of the action of trembling. The use of the noun quaver for a short musical note (first recorded in the 16th century) comes from the original singing of such notes with a trill.

quay [14] Quay is of Celtic origin. Its immediate source was Old French kai, but this was borrowed from Gaulish caio, which went back to an Old Celtic *kagio-. The spelling quay was introduced from modern French in the 17th century. The homophonic cay ‘small coral island’ [18] comes from cayo, a Spanish borrowing from French quai.

CAY

quean see GYNAECOLOGY

queen [OE] Queen goes back ultimately to prehistoric Indo-European *gwen- ‘woman’, source also of Greek gun ‘woman’ (from which English gets gynaecology), Persian zan ‘woman’ (from which English gets zenana ‘harem’), Swedish kvinna ‘woman’, and the now obsolete English quean ‘woman’. In its very earliest use in Old English queen (or cwn, as it then was) was used for a ‘wife’, but not just any wife: it denoted the wife of a man of particular distinction, and usually a king. It was not long before it became institutionalized as ‘king’s wife’, and hence ‘woman ruling in her own right’.

GYNAECOLOGY, QUEAN, ZENANA

queer [16] Queer was probably borrowed from German quer ‘across, oblique’, hence ‘perverse’. This went back to a prehistoric Indo-European *twerk-, which also produced English thwart and Latin torqure ‘twist’ (source of English torch, torture, etc).

THWART, TORCH, TORMENT, TORT, TORTURE

quell [OE] Quell and kill are probably closely related – indeed, in Old and Middle English quell was used for ‘kill’ (‘birds and small beasts with his bow he quells’, William of Palerne 1350). Quell goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *kwaljan (source also of German quälen ‘torture’), which may have had a variant *kuljan, that could have produced English kill. The milder modern sense of quell developed in the 14th century.

querulous see QUARREL

question [13] Question is one of a large family of English words that go back to the Latin verb quaerere ‘seek, ask’. Its past participle quaestus formed the basis of a noun, quaesti, which has become English question. An earlier form of the past participle was quaesitus, and its feminine version quaesta eventually passed into English via Old French as quest [14]. Other English words from the same source include acquire, conquer, enquire, exquisite, inquest, request, and require; and query [17] is an anglicization of quaere, the imperative form of quaerere.

ACQUIRE, CONQUER, ENQUIRE, EXQUISITE, INQUEST, QUERY, QUEST, REQUEST, REQUIRE

queue [16] Etymologically a queue is simply a ‘tail’. That was the meaning of its Latin ancestor cauda, a word of unknown origin which has also given English caudal ‘of a tail’ [17] and, via Italian, coda [18] (literally a ‘tail’-piece). To begin with in English queue (acquired via French) was used only as a technical term in heraldry for a ‘tail’. It was not until the 18th century that metaphorical applications started to appear: to a ‘billiard stick’ (now spelled cue) and a ‘pigtail’. ‘Line of people waiting’ (which has never caught on in American English) emerged in the early 19th century.

CODA

quibble [17] Quibble probably originated as a rather ponderous learned joke-word. It is derived from an earlier and now obsolete quib ‘pun’, which appears to have been based on quibus, the dative and ablative plural of Latin qu ‘who, what’. The notion is that since quibus made frequent appearances in legal documents written in Latin, it became associated with pettifogging points of law.

quiche [20] German kuchen ‘cake’ (a relative of English cake) is the original of quiche. In the dialect of Alsace it became küchen, which French transformed into quiche. The word found its way into English in the first half of the 20th century, but initially only as a specialist term for a somewhat recherché dish – before World War II, quiche Lorraine was exotic fare. It was the 1970s and the advent of winebar cuisine that made it much more widely familiar.

quick [OE] Originally quick meant ‘alive’ (as in the now fossilized phrase the quick and the dead); it was not until the 13th century that the sense ‘rapid’ began to emerge. It goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *kwikwaz (which also produced Swedish kvick ‘rapid’); and this was descended from an Indo-European base *gwej, which branched out into Latin vvus ‘alive’ (source of English vivid), Greek bíos ‘life’ (source of English biology), Welsh byw ‘alive’, Russian zhivoj ‘alive’, etc.

The couch of couch grass [16] is a variant of the now seldom encountered quitch, whose Old English ancestor cwice may be related to quick (the allusion presumably being to its vigorous growth).

BIOLOGY, VIVID

quid English has two words quid. The colloquial term for a ‘pound’ appears to be the same word as Latin quid ‘something’, and may have been inspired by the expression quid pro quo [16], literally ‘something for something’. Quid ‘piece of chewing tobacco’ [18] is a variant of cud.

CUD

quiet [14] The Latin noun quis meant ‘quiet’ (it came from a prehistoric Indo-European base *qwi- ‘rest’, which also produced English while and the final syllable of tranquil). From it was derived the verb quiscere ‘be still’ (source of English quiescent [17]). Its past participle quietus has given English quiet (and its Siamese twin coy), quit, and quite, not to mention the derived forms acquit and requite.

ACQUIT, COY, QUIT, QUITE, REQUITE, TRANQUIL, WHILE

quilt [13] The ultimate source of quilt is Latin culcita ‘mattress’, which passed into English via Old French cuilte. Its function gradually evolved from that of a mattress for lying on to that of a coverlet for lying under. A long-standing characteristic of such quilts is that their stuffing is held in place by cross-stitching. This does not emerge as a distinct meaning of the verb quilt (‘sew padded cloth in a crisscross pattern’) until the mid-16th century, but it is reflected in the medieval Latin term culcita puncta ‘pricked mattress’ – that is, a mattress that has been stitched. This passed into English via Old French as counterpoint, which was subsequently altered, by association with pane ‘panel’, to counterpane [17].

COUNTERPANE

quince [14] Etymologically, the quince is the ‘fruit from Khaniá’, a port on the northwest coast of Crete from which quinces were exported. In ancient times Khaniá was known as Cydonia (in Greek Kudnia), so the Greeks called the fruit mlon Kudnion ‘Cydonian apple’. Latin took the term over as cydneum, later cotneum, which passed into English via Old French cooin. The original English form of the word was quoyn, later quyn, but already by the early 14th century its plural quyns was coming to be regarded as a singular – whence modern English quince.

quinsy [14] Quinsy , a now virtually obsolete term for ‘sore throat’, has one of those etymologies that strain credulity to the limit. For it comes ultimately from a Greek term that meant literally ‘dog-strangling’. This was kunagkh, a compound formed from kun ‘dog’ (a distant relative of English hound) and ágkhein ‘strangle’, which originally denoted a sort of throat infection of dogs, which impaired their breathing, and was subsequently extended to a similar complaint in humans. English acquired the word via medieval Latin quinancia and Old French quinencie.

HOUND

quintessence [15] Just as modern particle physicists search for the ultimate constituent of matter, the common denominator of all known forces, so medieval alchemists tried to find a fifth primary essence, which together with earth, air, fire, and water formed the substance of all heaven and earth. This fifth essence, higher and more ethereal than the other four, was postulated by Aristotle, who called it aithr ‘either’. Another Greek term for it was pempt ousí ‘fifth essence’, which was translated into medieval Latin as quinta essentia – whence, via French, English quintessence. The metaphorical sense ‘most perfect or characteristic embodiment’ began to emerge in the second half of the 16th century.

Other English words based on quintus ‘fifth’, the ordinal form of Latin quinque ‘five’, include quintet [19] and quintuple [16].

quire see QUARTER

quisling [20] Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian politician who from 1933 led the National Union Party, the Norwegian fascist party (Quisling was not his real name – he was born Abraham Lauritz Jonsson). When the Germans invaded Norway in 1940 he gave them active support, urging his fellow Norwegians not to resist them, and in 1942 he was installed by Hitler as a puppet premier. In 1945 he was shot for treason. The earliest recorded use of his name in English as a generic term for a ‘traitor’ comes from April 1940.

quit [13] Quit comes from the same ultimate source as quiet – Latin quitus. This originally meant simply ‘quiet, calm’, but in medieval Latin it developed a wider range of senses, including ‘unharmed’ and ‘free’. From it was derived the verb quetre ‘set free, discharge’, which reached English via Old French quiter. The derived forms acquit and requite [16] come from the same source, and quite is essentially the same word as quit.

QUIET

quite [14] Quite is essentially the same word as the adjective quit ‘free, absolved, discharged, cleared’ (which in Middle English commonly took the alternative form quite). It came to be used as an adverb meaning ‘thoroughly, clearly’. The weaker modern sense ‘fairly’ did not develop until as recently as the mid-19th century.

QUIT

quixotic [18] Quixotic commemorates Don Quixote, the hero of Cervantes’s novel of the same name (published in two parts in 1605 and 1615). He was a slightly dotty Spanish gentleman whose head became turned by tales of chivalric derring-do, which he sought to emulate in real life. His most famous exploit was to charge with his lance at windmills, under the mistaken impression that they were giants.

quiz [19] No one has ever been able satisfactorily to explain the origins of quiz. A word of that form first appeared at the end of the 18th century, meaning ‘odd person’ or, as a verb, ‘make fun of’ (in the early 19th century it was claimed to have been coined by a Dublin theatre proprietor by the name of Daly, but no proof has ever been found for this). The verb later came to be used for ‘look at mockingly or questioningly through a monocle’, and it may be that this led on (perhaps helped by associations with inquisitive or Latin quis? ‘who?, what?’) to the sense ‘interrogate’.

quorum [15] Quorum began life as the genitive plural of the Latin pronoun qu ‘who’. This appeared in former times in the Latin text of commissions issued to persons who because of some special expertise were required to act as justices of the peace in a particular case (if two JPs were required, for instance, the wording would be quorum vos … duos esse volumnus ‘of whom we wish that you … be two’). In due course the word came to be used as a noun, denoting the ‘number of justices who must be present in order to try the case’, and in the 17th century this was generalized to ‘minimum number of members necessary for a valid meeting’.

quote [14] Latin quot meant ‘how many’. From it was derived the adjective quotus ‘of what number’, whose feminine form quota was used in post-classical times as a noun, denoting literally ‘how great a part’ – whence English quota [17]. Quotus also formed the basis of the medieval Latin verb quotre ‘number’, which was used specifically for the practice of marking sections of text in manuscripts with numbers, as reference points. English took the verb over as quote, and by the 16th century was using it for ‘cite’ or ‘refer to’. The derived unquote is first recorded in a letter by e e cummings, dated 1935.

Also based on quot was Latin quotins ‘how many times’, which has given English quotient [15]; and quotidian ‘daily’ [14] goes back ultimately to a Latin compound formed from quotus and dis ‘day’. But the archaic quoth [OE], despite a certain similarity in form and sense, is not related; it comes from cwth, the past tense of Old English cwethan ‘say’.

QUOTA, QUOTIENT

quoth see BEQUEATH