quail
pronunciation
How to pronounce quail in British English:
UK [kweɪl]
How to pronounce quail in American English:
US [kwel]
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- Noun:
- flesh of quail; suitable for roasting or broiling if young; otherwise must be braised
- small gallinaceous game birds
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- Verb:
- draw back, as with fear or pain
Word Origin
- quail
- 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 coāgulāre, source of English coagulate.=> coagulate
- quail (n.)
- migratory game bird, late 14c. (early 14c. as a surname (Quayle), from Old French quaille (Modern French caille), perhaps via Medieval Latin quaccula (source also of Provençal calha, Italian quaglia, Old Spanish coalla), or directly from a Germanic source (compare Dutch kwakkel, Old High German quahtala "quail," German Wachtel, Old English wihtel), imitative of the bird's cry. Or the English word might be directly from Proto-Germanic. Slang meaning "young attractive woman" first recorded 1859.
- quail (v.)
- c. 1400, "have a morbid craving;" early 15c., "grow feeble or sick;" mid-15c., "to fade, fail, give way," of unknown origin, perhaps from Middle Dutch quelen "to suffer, be ill," from Proto-Germanic *kwaljan, from PIE *gwele- (1) "to throw, to pierce" (see quell). Or from obsolete quail "to curdle" (late 14c.), from Old French coailler, from Latin coagulare (see coagulate). Sense of "lose heart, shrink, cower" is attested from 1550s. According to OED, common 1520-1650, then rare until 19c., when apparently it was revived by Scott. Related: Quailed; quailing.
Example
- 1. From plants to quail , life of all stripes seems to need gravity to work properly
- 2. The russians , oddly , did not quail .
- 3. For openers , quail eggs in aspic with caviar was a tidbit that a surviving diner had enjoyed in titanic 's a la carte restaurant that fatal evening .
- 4. The deal was apparently struck when exxon 's chief executive , rex tillerson , entertained bob simpson , xto 's boss , at a quail hunt on company land in texas .
- 5. " As thomasville is really the centre of quail hunting , there are many collectors of dog paintings there , " says secord .