quill

Meanings

Noun

• The lower shaft of a feather, specifically the region lacking barbs.
• A pen made from a feather.
• Any pen.
• A sharply pointed, barbed, and easily detached needle-like structure that grows on the skin of a porcupine or hedgehog as a defense against predators.
• A thin piece of bark, especially of cinnamon or cinchona, curled up into a tube.
• The pen of a squid.
• The plectrum with which musicians strike the strings of certain instruments.
• The tube of a musical instrument.
• Something having the form of a quill, such as the fold or plain of a ruff, or a spindle, or spool, upon which the thread for the woof is wound in a shuttle.

Verb

• To pierce or be pierced with quills.
• To write.
• To form fabric into small, rounded folds.
• To decorate with quillwork.
• To subject (a woman who is giving birth) to the practice of quilling (blowing pepper into her nose to induce or hasten labor).

Origin

• From late Middle English quil, which is first attested in the early 15th century with the meanings "fragment of reed" and "shaft of a feather", probably from Low German and Middle Low German quiele, possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH-.
• Compare Middle High German kil ("large feather, quill"), which is derived from the Low German term.