quail

verb

1. (intransitive)To waste away; to fade, to wither.
2. (archaic, transitive)To daunt or frighten (someone).

   “Death dvvels vvithin vs, and if gentle Peace / Diſcend not ſoone, our ſorrovves to ſurceaſe, / Latium (alreadie quaild) vvill be deſtroyd.”

   “But when he meant to quaile and shake the Orbe, / He was as ratling Thunder.”

   “To tell the truth the prospect rather quailed him – wandering about in the gloomy corridors of a nunnery.”

3. (intransitive)To lose heart or courage; to be daunted or fearful.

   “Though George had stopped in his sentence, yet, his blood being up, he was not to be cowed by all the generations of Osborne; rallying instantly, he replied to the bullying look of his father, with another so indicative of resolution and defiance, that the elder man quailed in his turn, and looked away.”

   “Mr. Utterson had already quailed at the name of Hyde; but when the stick was laid before him, he could doubt no longer: broken and battered as it was, he recognized it for one that he had himself presented many years before to Henry Jekyll.”

   “Stouter hearts than a woman's have quailed in this terrible winter. Yours is tender and trusting, and needs a stronger one to lean on; so I have come to you now, with an offer of marriage.”

   “The sun had shifted round, and the myriad windows of the Ministry of Truth, with the light no longer shining on them, looked grim as the loopholes of a fortress. His heart quailed before the enormous pyramidal shape. It was too strong, it could not be stormed.”

   “His colleagues quailed when, in 1986, he first sat on the court as a brash 50-year-old whose experience had been mostly as a combative government lawyer: a justice who, in that sanctum of columns and deep judicial silence, was suddenly firing questions like grapeshot.”

4. (intransitive)Of courage, faith, etc.: to slacken, to give way.

   “Therewith his ſturdie corage ſoone was quayd, / And all his ſences were with ſuddein dread diſmayd.”

   “"Sir, if you think your name is shamed by me, we had better part," said Mrs. Trevelyan, rising from her chair, and confronting him with a look before which his own almost quailed.”

   “And he commanded his soldiers […] to frighten them with fierce swords, but the hearts of the holy men did not quail, and they were unable to alter their words.”

5. (obsolete)To curdle or coagulate, as milk does.

   “[Laser is given] to such as haue supped off and drunk quailed milke, that is cluttered within their stomack.”

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)Any of various small game birds of the genera Coturnix, Anurophasis or Perdicula in the Old World family Phasianidae or of the New World family Odontophoridae.

   “Quail require little water, so there is no point to putting in a guzzler if there is any permanent water within travel range.”

2. (uncountable)The meat from this bird eaten as food.
3. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)A prostitute.

   “Her's Agamemnon, an honeſt fellow inough and one that loues quailes, but hee has not ſo much braine as eare-wax, […]”

name

1. A surname from Scottish Gaelic.