1965, proprietary name (trademark by Wm. H. Rorer Inc., Ft. Washington, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.) of methaqualone used as a sedative drug. The name is said to be based on quiet interlude.
"a member of the Christian denomination known as the Religious Society of Friends," 1651, said to have been applied to them in 1650 by Justice Bennett at Derby, from George Fox's admonition to his followers to "tremble at the Word of the Lord;" but the word was used earlier of foreign sects given to fits of shaking during religious fervor, and that is likely the source here. Either way, it never was an official name of the Religious Society of Friends.
The word in a literal sense of "one who or that which trembles" is attested from early 15c., an agent noun from quake (v.). The notion of "trembling" in religious awe is in Old English; quaking (n.) meaning "fear and reverence" especially in religion is attested from mid-14c.
There is not a word in the Scripture, to put David's condition into rime and meeter: sometimes he quaked and trembled, and lay roaring all the day long, that he watered his bed with his tears: and how can you sing these conditions (but dishonour the Lord) and say all your bones quake, your flesh trembled, and that you water your bed with your tears? when you live in pride and haughtiness, and pleasure, and wantonness .... ["A Brief Discovery of a threefold estate of Antichrist Now Extant in the world, etc.," an early Quaker work, London, 1653]
Figuratively, as an adjective, in reference to plain or drab colors (such as were worn by members of the sect) is by 1775. A Quaker gun (1809, American English), originally a log painted black and propped up to resemble the barrel of a cannon to deceive the enemy from a distance, is so called for the sect's noted pacifism. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has been known as the Quaker City at least since 1824. Related: Quakerish; Quakeress ("a female Quaker"); Quakerism; Quakerdom; Quakerly.
native people of Peru and surrounding regions, 1811, from Spanish, according to OED from Quechua (Inca) kechua "plunderer, destroyer." Also the name of their language. Related: Quechuan.
New York City borough, named for Catherine of Braganza, queen of English King Charles II.
Australian state, founded 1859 and named for Queen Victoria of Great Britain. Related: Queenslander.
masc. proper name, from French, from Latin Quin(c)tianus, from quintus "the fifth." Roman children in large families often were named for their birth order (compare Sextius; also see Octavian). "[P]opular in France from the cult of St Quentin of Amiens, and brought to England by the Normans" ["Dictionary of English Surnames"], but the popular English form as a surname was Quinton.
royal palace in Rome, later the Italian presidential palace, 1838, from Mons Quirinalis in Rome (one of the seven hills, site of a former Papal palace), from Quirinus, said to be the divine name of Romulus, but rather one of the original trinity of Roman gods, assimilated to Mars. His feast (Quirinalia) was Feb. 17, the day Romulus was said to have been translated to heaven. Used metonymically for "the Italian civil government" (1917), especially as distinguished from the Vatican.
1942, from Quonset Point Naval Air Station, Rhode Island, where this type of structure was first built, in 1941. The place name is from a southern New England Algonquian language and perhaps means "small, long place."
