qua
[KWAY; KWAH]
In the capacity or character of; as.
Examples:
1) This might be thought a decisive objection to a federal judge's writing about this subject even if the judge writes qua academic rather than qua judge. (Richard A. Posner, "An Affair of State")
2) Gossipmongers aren't obsessed with gossip qua gossip; they're grappling with the great issues of our day: Truth, Honor and Justice. (Robert Plunket, "Cyberscandal", New York Times, June 1, 1997)
3) Another problem is the estimation in which one is held qua artist by fellow New Yorkers. (John Romano, "Is Hollywood Fatal for New York Writers?", New York Times, March 11, 1984)
Etymology:
"Qua" is from the Latin, from "qui" ("who").


quack
An incompetent doctor; someone who pretends to have medical knowledge but does not.
Example:
I'm afraid my doctor may be a quack. He told me that the best way to cure a cold is to eat a cheese sandwich while standing on my head!
Etymology:
Derived from a Dutch word, 'quacksalver', which refers to someone who sells worthless potions and remedies.
'Quack' is also the sound that a duck makes.


quaff
[KWOFF; KWAFF]
1. (transitive verb) To drink with relish; to drink copiously of; to swallow in large draughts.
2. (intransitive verb) To drink largely or luxuriously.
3. (noun) A drink quaffed.
Examples:
1) He gets drunk with his guides, makes eyes at the girls and gamely quaffs snake wine. (Pico Iyer, "Snake Wine and Socialism," New York Times, December 15, 1991)
2) If you were patient and kept your nose clean, you could slowly, almost effortlessly, rise from serf to squire and maybe even all the way to knight, in which case you, too, would be entitled to quaff bowl-size martinis at midday. (Charles McGrath, "Office Romance," New York Times Magazine, March 5, 2000)
3) Instead they consume caviar, feed off [3]foie gras, chomp exotic cheeses, and quaff champagne. ("Internet Shopper," Times (London), August 11, 2000)
Etymology:
"Quaff" is of unknown origin. 1520 (implied in "quaffer"), perhaps onomatopoeic, or perhaps from Low Ger. "quassen" ("to overindulge", in food and drink), with -ss- misread as -ff-. The noun is from 1579.


quagmire
[KWAG-myr; KWOG-]
1. Soft, wet, miry land that shakes or yields under the feet.
2. A difficult or precarious position or situation; a predicament.
Examples:
1) . . . drenching rains that reduced all the roads to quagmires. ("The Career of a Soldier," New York Times, July 24, 1885)
2) Slowly, inevitably, over the course of several months, Don Jaime's pupil draws him into a quagmire of plot and counterplot. (Walter Satterthwait, "Crossing Swords," New York Times, June 6, 1999)
3) While the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he was awarded in 1957, should have signaled the pinnacle of Camus's career, it came at a time when he was struggling in the deepening quagmire of the Algerian war. (Isabelle de Courtivron, "Rebel Without a Cause," New York Times, December 14, 1997)
Etymology:
"Quagmire" is from "quag", a dialectical variant of "quake" (from Old English "cwacian") + "mire", from Old Norse "myrr" ("a swamp").


qualm
1. a sudden attack of illness, faintness, or nausea
2. a sudden access of usually disturbing emotion (as doubt or fear)
3. a feeling of uneasiness about a point especially of conscience or propriety
Example:
"This is the third time I've caught Lindsey cheating", said Judy, "so I have no qualms about turning her in".
Etymology:
Etymologists aren't sure where "qualm" originated, but they do know it entered English around 1530. Originally, it referred to a sudden sick feeling. Robert Louis Stevenson made use of this older sense in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde": "A qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering". Soon after "qualm" entered the language, it came to designate not only sudden attacks of illness, but also sudden attacks of emotion or principle. "In The Sketch Book", for example, Washington Irving wrote, "Immediately after one of these fits of extravagance, he will be taken with violent qualms of economy". Eventually, "qualm" took on the specific (and now most common) meaning of doubt or uneasiness, particularly in not following one's conscience or better judgment.


qualtagh
1. the first person you meet after leaving your house on some special occasion.
2. the first person entering a house on New Years Day (often called a first foot). The new years qualtagh, for luck, is supposed to be a dark-haired man. A red-headed or female qualtagh is unlucky. Other things to bring luck to the house on New Years Day include serving black-eyed peas, having the qualtagh bring shortbread and whiskey (sounds fine for any day of the year), and sweeping all the garbage in the house out through the front door before midnight on New Years Eve (so that any of the misfortune of the past year is gone, not to return).

quandary
[KWAHN-duh-ree; -dree] A state of difficulty, perplexity, doubt, or uncertainty.
Examples:
1) Don . . . told me of the quandary that the authorities were in. Should the ruins be left untouched or should they be reconstructed for a new wave of tourists? (Benjamin Hopkins, "How to avoid the tourists in Peru", Times (London), May 6, 2000)
2) The school commissioners . . . were in a quandary over the needful size of an "open-air playground." (Jacob A. Riis, "The Battle with the Slum")
3) Once or twice as I stood waiting there for things to accomplish themselves, I could not resist an impulse to laugh at my miserable quandary. (H.G. Wells, "The Island of Doctor Moreau")
Etymology:
"Quandary", 1579, of unknown origin, perhaps a quasi-Latinism based on L. "quando" ("when").



quasar

• QSOs
• QSO
• quasi-stellar radio source
• quasi-stellar
• radio
• source
• quasi-stellar radio object
• object
• quasi-stellar object

(Astronomy)
1. Any of a class of rare cosmic objects of high luminosity as well as strong radio emission observed at extremely great distances. The term is also often applied to closely related objects that have the same optical appearance but that are radio quiet - the so-called QSOs, which stands for "quasi-stellar objects" (see 2).
2. A quasi-stellar object with a large red shift, distant starlike celestial object that emits massive amounts of radiation; a starlike object that may send out radio waves and other forms of energy; large red shifts imply enormous recession velocities.
Synonyms: quasi-stellar radio source; quasi-stellar radio object
Example:
QSOs are an optical illusion created by gravitational bending of the light from the opposite jet by a huge mass within the quasar.
History:
When they were first detected by Martin Schmidt and Allan R. Sandage in 1963, they were called "radio stars" because they emit large amounts of radiation, including radio waves. This was eventually replaced by the word "quasar", which is short for either "quasi-stellar radio objects" or "quasi-stellar radio source". Nowadays astronomers are calling this class of celestial objects "QSOs", which is short for "Quasi-Stellar Objects", so that the term will include quasars that don't emit radio waves.


quash
[KWOSH]
1. (law) To abate, annul, overthrow, or make void; as, "to quash an indictment."
2. To crush; to subdue; to suppress or extinguish summarily and completely; as, "to quash a rebellion."
Examples:
1) The Shelby Globe attributed her death to acute heart failure and yellow jaundice and did its best to quash a curious town rumor that had her being poisoned by eating oyster sandwiches. (Tim Page, "Dawn Powell: A Biography")
2) The German-French entente made NATO intervention to quash the Balkan civil wars possible, and the collapse of the Soviet Union made NATO's intervention deep into the former Soviet sphere of influence permissible. (Thomas L. Friedman, "Was Kosovo World War III?" New York Times, July 2, 1999)
3) [The law] . . . also installed newspaper censorship, enabling the government to quash anything "calculated to jeopardise the success of the operations of any of His Majesty's forces or to assist the enemy." (Philip Hoare, "Oscar Wilde's Last Stand")
Etymology:
"Quash" comes from Medieval French "quasser", from Latin "quassare" - "to shake violently, to shatter," frequentative form of "quatere" - "to shake". "Quash" ("to annul") has been sense-influenced by Late Latin "cassare" ("to annul"), from Latin "cassus" - "empty," whereas "quash" ("to crush") has been sense-influenced by "squash".


querulous
[KWER-uh-luhs; -yuh]
1. Apt to find fault; habitually complaining.
2. Expressing complaint; fretful; whining.
Examples:
1) Querulous Oscar rattles on, never more or less than himself, but never much more than the content of his grumpy rattling. (Sven Birkerts, "A Frolic of His Own," New Republic, February 7, 1994)
2) Mam is a tragic figure when transported to New York by her successful sons - querulous, unable to get a decent cup of tea. (Maureen Howard, "McCourt's New World," New York Times, September 19, 1999)
3) Men who feel strong in the justice of their cause, or confident in their powers, do not waste breath in childish boasts of their own superiority and querulous depreciation of their antagonists. (James Russell Lowell, "The Pickens-and-Stealin's Rebellion," The Atlantic, June 1861)
Etymology:
"Querulous" comes from Latin "querulus", from "queri" ("to complain").


quick buck

• easy money
• quick
• buck
• easy
• money

Fast and easy profit; money made in a short period of time; money earned quickly and easily (and sometimes dishonestly).
Examples:
1) He doesn't care about you - all he wants is to make a quick buck. 2) Are you interested in making a long-term investment or in turning a quick buck? Etymology:
'Quick' means fast, and 'buck' is slang for a dollar bill. Synonym: easy money


quick-pick

• quick
• pick
• quickpick

Some kind of numbers lottery game. It may be a trademark of the company that runs these ticket-based lotteries under contract for several US states. (See: The quicker picker-upper.)

quid pro quo

• quid
• pro
• quo

1. something given or received for something else;
2. a deal arranging a quid pro quo.
Example:
The company agreed to the wage increases as a quid pro quo for the union's relinquishment of its demand for a shorter workday.
Etymology:
In the 1560s, a quid pro quo was something obtained from an apothecary. That's because when "quid pro quo" (New Latin for "something for something") was first used in English, it referred to the process of substituting one medicine for another - whether intentionally (and sometimes fraudulently) or accidentally. The meaning of the phrase was quickly extended, however, and by 1582 it was being used for more general equivalent exchanges. These days, it often occurs in legal contexts.


quiddity

• quintessence
• Quibble
• quirk

[KWID-uh-tee]
1. Whatever makes something the type that it is; the essence, nature, or distinctive peculiarity of a thing.
2. A hairsplitting distinction; a trifling point; a quibble. 3. An eccentricity; an odd feature; crotchet.
Examples:
1) We wanted to enhance [the house] without 'countrifying' it - for it to retain its quiddity, its 'whatness.' (April Gornik in "Architectural Digest", April 1989)
2) He wanted to capture not just live animals, but the aliveness of animals in their natural state: their wildness, their quiddity, the fox-ness of the fox and the crow-ness of the crow. (Thomas Nye, quoted in "Ted Hughes, 68, a Symbolic Poet And Sylvia Plath's Husband, Dies," New York Times, October 30, 1998)
3) So far, I have tried to intimate, through meshed parallels and contrasts, something of the nature, the quiddity, of Japanese and of American literature. (Ihab Hassan, "In the mirror of the sun: reflections on Japanese and American literature, Basho to Cage," World Literature Today, March 1, 1995)
4) Boswell set biography a new ambition: capturing the copiousness and quiddity of a personality - the self peculiarly revealed in odd quirks and, especially, in unpredictable, evanescent talk. (John Mullan, "Dreaming up the Doctor," The Guardian, November 11, 2000)
5) It is neither grammatical subtleties nor logical quiddities, nor the witty contexture of choice words or arguments and syllogisms, that will serve my turn. (Michel de Montaigne, "Of Books")
6) She has looked after my interests with consummate skill, dealt with my quiddities and constantly kept up my spirits. (John Brewer, "The Pleasures of the Imagination")
7) I began . . . to give some thought to the memoir I had promised to write and wondered how I would go about it - his freaks, quiddities, oddities, his eating, drinking, shaving, dressing and playfully savaging his students. (Saul Bellow, Ravelstein)
History, related words:
When it comes to synonyms of "quiddity," the Q's have it. Consider "quintessence," a synonym of the "essence of a thing "sense of "quiddity" (this oldest sense of "quiddity" dates from the 14th century). "Quibble" is a synonym of the "trifling point" sense; that meaning of "quiddity" arose from the subtler points of 16th-century academic arguments. And "quirk," like "quiddity," can refer to a person's eccentricities. Of course, "quiddity" also derives from a "Q" word, the Latin pronoun "quis," which is one of two Latin words for "who" (the other is "qui"). "Quid," the neuter form of "quis," gave rise to the Medieval Latin "quidditas," which means "essence," a term that was essential to the development of the English "quiddity."


quidnunc
[KWID-nuhngk]
One who is curious to know everything that passes; one who knows or pretends to know all that is going on; a gossip; a busybody.
Examples:
1) What a treasure-trove to these venerable quidnuncs, could they have guessed the secret which Hepzibah and Clifford were carrying along with them! (Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The House of the Seven Gables")
2) Some wretched intrigue which had puzzled two generations of quidnuncs. (L. Stephen, Hours in Library)
Etymology:
"Quidnunc" comes from Latin "quid nunc?" ("what now?").


quietus

• put the quietus on smth.
• put the quietus on
• put the quietus
• put on
• quietus
• quit

[kwy-EE-tus]
1. Final discharge or acquittance, as from debt or obligation.
2. Removal from activity; rest; death.
3. Something that serves to suppress or quiet.
Examples:
1) I have put a quietus upon that ticking. Depend upon it, the ticking will trouble you no more. (Herman Melville, "The Apple-Tree Table")
2) Consider a small police-blotter report from an 1875 issue of 'The Grant County Herald in Silver City', N[ew] M[exico]: "We learn that on Friday, Jose Garcia, who lives at the Chino copper mines, caught his wife in flagrante delicto - we leave the reader to guess the crime - Jose, then and there, gave her the quietus with an axe." (Thomas Kunkel, "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Six-Shooter", 'New York Times', August 30, 1998)
3) It was after eleven when Fanning put the quietus to his day, retreating to the "Hospitality Suite" where he'd been hanging his hat these past weeks. (David Long, "The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux")
4) During his final illness, someone asked Schiller how he felt: "calmer and calmer" was the reply. It was a quietus he richly deserved. (Roger Kimball, "Schiller's 'Aesthetic Education'", 'New Criterion', March 2001)
5) The constant rain and the cold have combined to put a quietus on outdoor activities." (Glenn Tucker, quoted in the "Bangor Daily News" /Maine/, Oct. 10, 2005)
History, related words and expressions, more examples:
Did you know? In the early 1500s, English speakers adopted the Medieval Latin phrase "quietus est" (literally "he is quit" or "(it is) at rest"), said of an obligation that has been discharged, as the name for the writ of discharge exempting a baron or knight from payment of a knight's fee to the king - from Latin "quietus" ("at rest"). In English, the expression was later shortened to "quietus", too, and applied to the termination of any debt. William Shakespeare was the first to use "quietus" as a metaphor for the termination of life in his tragedy "Hamlet": "For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, ... When he himself might his quietus make / With a bare bodkin?" The third meaning, which is more influenced by "quiet" than "quit," appeared in the 19th century. It often occurs in the phrase "put the quietus on" (as in the fifth example sentence).


quincunx
[KWIN-kunks]
An arrangement of five things in a square or rectangle with one at each corner and one in the middle.
Example:
The tables were arranged in a quincunx, with the hosting family at the center table and guests at the four corner tables.
Etymology:
In ancient Rome a "quincunx" was a coin whose name comes from the Latin roots "quinque", meaning "five," and "uncia," meaning "one twelfth." The weight of the coin equaled five twelfths of a "libra," a unit of weight similar to today's pound. The ancients used a pattern of five dots arranged like the spots on dice as a symbol for the coin, and English speakers applied the word to arrangements similar to that distinctive five-dot mark.


quintessence
[kwin-TESS-unss]
1. The fifth and highest element in ancient and medieval philosophy that permeates all nature and is the substance composing the celestial bodies.
2. The essence of a thing in its purest and most concentrated form.
3. The most typical example or representative.
Example:
Do not shorten the morning by getting up late; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. (Arthur Schopenhauer, "Counsels and Maxims")
History:
Long ago, when people believed that the earth was made up of four elements - earth, air, fire, and water - they thought the stars and planets were made up of yet another element. In the Middle Ages, people called this element by its Medieval Latin name, "quinta essentia," literally, "fifth essence." Our forebears believed the quinta essentia was essential to all kinds of matter, and if they could somehow isolate it, it would cure all disease. We have since given up on that idea, but we kept "quintessence," the offspring of "quinta essentia," as a word for the purest essence of a thing. Modern physicists have given "quintessence" a new twist - they use it for a form of so-called "dark energy," which is believed to make up 70 percent of the universe.

quirk
[KWURK]
Curve, twist; strange habit, eccentricity; evasion, avoidance; turn, swerve; flourish (in handwriting).
Example:
David quirked his eyebrow in perplexity at his companion's curious remark.
History, more meanings:
Did you expect "quirk" to be a noun meaning "a peculiarity of action or behavior"? If so, you're probably not alone; the "peculiarity" sense of the noun "quirk" is commonly known and has been a part of English since at least 1878. But "quirk" has long worn other hats in English, too. It has been used as both a noun and a verb since the 16th century. The noun "quirk," which essentially means "a curve, turn, or twist," has named everything from curving pen marks on paper (i.e., flourishes) to witty turns of phrase to the vagaries or twists of fate. In contemporary English the verb "quirk" is most often used in referring to facial expressions, especially those that involve crooked smiles or furrowed eyebrows.


quirkyalone

• International Quirkyalone Day

A person who likes to be unmarried preferring to wait for the right person to appear; someone who is single and would like a partner, but prefers to wait for the right person to come along rather than dating indiscriminately or fervently sifting through a large pool of potential partners.
Example:
If all of these methods of finding the person of your dreams leave you cold, or if indeed you are not intending to purchase a Valentine's card this year, you could be described as a quirkyalone.
History:
The word "quirkyalone" was coined in 1999 by American author Sasha Cagen. So if Valentine's day doesn't appeal to you, maybe you might subscribe to the alternative that Cagen has promoted, which she calls "International Quirkyalone Day": "International Quirkyalone Day is a do-it-yourself celebration of romance, friendship, and independent spirit. There are no giant teddy bears, Hallmark cards or gigantic red boxes of chocolate, just honest love and displays of affection."




quisling
[KWIZ-ling]
Someone who collaborates with an enemy occupying his/her country; a traitor.
Examples:
1) In the clutches of Herod, a quisling whom even his Roman paymasters despise, John is an all-too-perfect personification of Israel under Roman rule abetted by Jewish collaboration. (Jack Miles, "Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God")
2) This circle had already closed ranks around Tito in the prewar period of illegal struggle, and our ensuing sacrifices, our suffering, the exploits of both Party and people as they made war against the Nazi and Fascist occupiers and their quislings and supporters, had only further toughened and hardened the leaders. (Milovan Djilas, "Fall of the New Class")
Etymology:
A quisling is so called after Vidkun Quisling (1887-1945), Norwegian politician and officer who collaborated with the Nazis.


quitting time

• quitting
• time

The end of the workday; time to go home.
Example: It's almost quitting time -- I can't wait to get out of here and have some fun!
Etymology: 'Quit' means 'to stop working', so 'quitting time' is that time of the day when you put down your tools or turn off your computer.

quodlibet

• Quodlibet
• moot

[KWAHD-luh-bet]
1. an academical, philosophical or theological point proposed for disputation;
2. a disputation on such a point;
3. a whimsical combination of familiar melodies or texts; a light-hearted medley of well-known tunes.
Example:
The concert ended with a quodlibet of 20th-century music that ranged from Aaron Copland's "Hoedown" to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring."
History, more examples:
The Latin "quodlibet" is a form of "quilibet," from "qui" or "quod", meaning "what," plus "libet" ("it pleases"), so roughly "what pleases you" or "as you like". It seems to have had much the same idea behind it as the modern hand-waving "whatever" - "argue away", the word seems to be saying, the result is of little consequence.
Though the first sense has fallen out of day-to-day use, it is usually given in dictionaries because philosophers at times have cause to refer to some medieval quodlibet, as here in "The Review of Metaphysics" of June 2003: "In his Quodlibet III, disputed in 1288, Giles of Rome asked ex professo whether the will could move itself." These disputations, often on subtle points of logic or religious doctrine, were frequently exercises for students, in the same spirit as moots (mock court cases) are for the legal fraternity.
How it got from philosophy to music is intriguing, not least because it didnt happen in English. In the late Middle Ages in Germany, "quodlibet" started to be applied to type of humour that featured daft lists of items loosely combined under an absurd theme  one example was objects forgotten by women fleeing from a harem. Something similar happened in France, where a quodlibet became a witty riddle  even today, "avoir de quolibet" means to produce clever repartee on demand.
The German idea of the humorous conglomeration was first applied to a musical composition by Wolfgang Schmeltzl in 1544 and the name later became the usual term in that language for facetious combinations of tunes haphazardly combined. Famous examples exist in works by Bach and Mozart in the 18th century. In his biography of Bach, published in 1802, Johann Forkel says it was a Bach family custom to improvise such joking medleys and that the Bachs called them by this name - so they may be the source of the musical sense. In this connection it certainly lives up to the idea behind the Latin word, since the aim is to produce a humorous combination of tunes to please the audience.
While the disputational sense is recorded in English from the 12th century, the musical one only appears in 1845 and was clearly borrowed from German.

quondam
[KWAHN-duhm; KWAHN-dam]
Having been formerly; former; sometime.
Examples:
1) A quondam flower child, she spent seven years at the Royal College of Art, before becoming a lecturer at Edinburgh School of Art. ("Interview: Cool, calm collector," Independent, December 13, 1997)
2) For the unregenerate "peasant"... had gone there with the successful glass distributor, shrewd investor, versatile talker, and quondam bon vivant whose motto was "The best is good enough for me." (Ted Solotaroff, "Truth Comes in Blows: A Memoir")
3) There was an exception to this in the form of Mrs Edna Parsons, a formidable Englishwoman who had once been the Prince's nanny and now served as proctor, supervising his behaviour. She was about fifty and true to her quondam profession, she could be quite strict. (David Freeman, "One of Us")
Etymology:
"Quondam" comes from the Latin "quondam" ("formerly"), from "quom" ("when").


quorum
[KWOR-uhm]
1. Such a number of the officers or members of any body as is legally competent to transact business.
2. A select group.
Examples:
1) The extraordinary powers of the Senate were vested in twenty-six men, fourteen of whom would constitute a quorum, of which eight would make up a majority. (Akhil Reed Amar, "The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction")
2) What other quorum in American history, save those who wrote our constitution, could claim as much impact on our day-to-day lives? (Gavin de Becker, "The Gift of Fear")
Etymology:
"Quorum" comes from the Latin "quorum" ("of whom"), from "qui" ("who"). The term arose from the wording of the commission once issued to justices of the peace in England, by which commission it was directed that no business of certain kinds should be done without the presence of one or more specially designated justices.


quotidian
[kwoh-TID-ee-uhn]
1. Occurring or returning daily; as, a quotidian fever.
2. Of an everyday character; ordinary; commonplace.
Examples:
1) Erasmus thought More's career as a lawyer was a waste of a fine mind, but it was precisely the human insights More derived from his life in the quotidian world that gave him a moral depth Erasmus lacked. ("More man than saint," Irish Times, April 4, 1998)
2) She also had a sense of fun that was often drummed out under the dull, quotidian beats of suburban life. (Meg Wolitzer, "Surrender, Dorothy")
Etymology:
"Quotidian" is from Latin "quotidianus", from "quotidie" ("daily"), from "quotus" ("how many, as many, so many") + "dies" ("day").