Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Quillet
Webster 1828 Edition
Quillet
QUIL'LET
,Noun.
Subtilty; nicety; fraudulent distinction; petty cant. [Not much used.]
Definition 2024
quillet
quillet
See also: quillet-
English
Noun
quillet (plural quillets)
- A quibble, an evasive distinction.
- 1602, William Shakespeare, Hamlet , act V, scene 1:
- Where be his quiddities now - his quillets, his cases, his tenures and his tricks?
- 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, NYRB, 2001, volume 1, page 327-8:
- Hence it comes that such a pack of vile buffoons […] intrude with unwashed feet upon the sacred precinct of Theology, bringing with them nothing save brazen impudence, and some hackneyed quillets and scholastic trifles not good enough for a crowd at a street corner.
- 1602, William Shakespeare, Hamlet , act V, scene 1:
Etymology 2
Origin unknown.
Noun
quillet (plural quillets)
- (now regional) A small plot of land; historically: a strip of land that together with others like it formed a larger field.
- 1908, Sabine Baring-Gould, “Hugh Stafford and the Royal Wilding”, in Devonshire Characters and Strange Events, London: John Lane, page 7:
- The single and only [Royal Wilding apple] tree from which the apple was first propagated […] stands in a very little quillet (as we call it) of gardening, adjoining to the post-road that leads from Exeter to Oakhampton, in the parish of St. Thomas, but near the borders of another parish called Whitestone.
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