Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Something that serves to suppress, check, or eliminate.
- noun Release from life; death.
- noun A final discharge, as of a duty or debt.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A final discharge of an account; a final settlement; a quittance.
- noun Hence A finishing or ending in general; stoppage.
- noun A severe blow; a “settler.”
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Final discharge or acquittance, as from debt or obligation; that which silences claims; (Fig.) rest; death.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A stillness or pause; something that quiets or represses; removal from activity; especially: death.
- noun Final settlement (as of a debt).
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun euphemisms for death (based on an analogy between lying in a bed and in a tomb)
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Quietus is a short form of the term quietus est or abeinde recessit quietus, the formulae used in the Court of the Exchequer to show that an account has been correctly presented and cleared.
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One way in which a language lives and grows is by modifying existing meanings and employing them in new contexts, and it is the poets who contribute most to this process.. bqb As an example from Shakespeare we can take the word quietus which at first sight seems not to lend itself to poetry at all.
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I think you need to come to terms with the fact that a large number of people in the UK see giving drugs smugglers/dealers their quietus is the way to go - pick me on that one.
Army Rumour Service 2009
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I think you need to come to terms with the fact that a large number of people in the UK see giving drugs smugglers/dealers their quietus is the way to go - pick me on that one.
Army Rumour Service 2009
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I think you need to come to terms with the fact that a large number of people in the UK see giving drugs smugglers/dealers their quietus is the way to go - pick me on that one.
Army Rumour Service 2009
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I think you need to come to terms with the fact that a large number of people in the UK see giving drugs smugglers/dealers their quietus is the way to go - pick me on that one.
Army Rumour Service 2009
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I think you need to come to terms with the fact that a large number of people in the UK see giving drugs smugglers/dealers their quietus is the way to go - pick me on that one.
Army Rumour Service 2009
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Maupassant they get their "quietus" from the height, so to speak, of the saddle of a sporting gentleman.
Suspended Judgments Essays on Books and Sensations John Cowper Powys 1917
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The idea of the open Polar Sea then received its "quietus," for nothing but ice is there.
Notable Voyagers From Columbus to Nordenskiold William Henry Giles Kingston 1847
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In Oslo, August 31st, the Norwegian central character, Anders, is a drug addict from a similar background who makes his quietus after a day in the national capital.
plumpesdenken commented on the word quietus
The quietus he delivered to literary realism literally went unnoticed. Casanova, Samuel Beckett, p. 105.
January 9, 2007
chained_bear commented on the word quietus
"'Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' cried Stephen, starting up. 'Do you ask me to discuss a patient, sir? Be damned to your impertinence. You will be desiring me to give him a quietus next.'"
--P. O'Brian, The Yellow Admiral, 206
March 19, 2008
roseandivy commented on the word quietus
"With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make
a bruise or break for exit for his life;
but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus?
Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder
ever a quietus make?
O let us talk of quiet that we know,
that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet
of a strong heart at peace!
How can we this, our own quietus make?"
D.H. Lawrence, "The Ship of Death"
March 19, 2008
yarb commented on the word quietus
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?
- Hamlet, III, i.
March 19, 2008