quell
pronunciation
How to pronounce quell in British English:
UK [kwel]
How to pronounce quell in American English:
US [kwel]
-
- Verb:
- suppress or crush completely
- overcome or allay
Word Origin
- quell
- 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.
- quell (v.)
- Old English cwellan "to kill, murder, execute," from Proto-Germanic *kwaljanan (cognates: Old English cwelan "to die," cwalu "violent death;" Old Saxon quellian "to torture, kill;" Old Norse kvelja "to torment;" Middle Dutch quelen "to vex, tease, torment;" Old High German quellan "to suffer pain," German quälen "to torment, torture"), from PIE root *gwele- (1) "to throw, reach," with extended sense of "to pierce" (cognates: Armenian kelem "I torture;" Old Church Slavonic zali "pain;" Lithuanian galas "end," gela "agony," gelti "to sting;" see ballistics). Milder sense of "suppress, extinguish" developed by c. 1300. Related: Quelled; quelling.
Example
- 1. Yet these advantages cannot quell a nagging unease .
- 2. Can anything quell a math hater 's brain pain ?
- 3. Caribbean police forces were set up in colonial times to catch mango thieves and quell native unrest .
- 4. His remarks didn 't quell the selling .
- 5. To quell the unrest , westminster ploughed money into the province .