American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A set of 24 or sometimes 25 sheets of paper of the same size and stock; one twentieth of a ream.
- n. A collection of leaves of parchment or paper, folded one within the other, in a manuscript or book.
- n. Archaic Variant of choir.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A body of singers; a chorus.
- n. The part of a church allotted to the choristers; the choir.
- n. A company or assembly.
- To sing in concert or chorus; chant or sing harmoniously.
- To harmonize.
- n. A set of four sheets of parchment or paper folded so as to make eight leaves: the ordinary unit of construction for early manuscripts and books.
- n. A set of one of each of the sheets of a book laid in consecutive order, ready for folding.
- n. A book.
- n. Twenty-four sheets of paper; the twentieth part of a ream.
- To fold in quires, or with marks between quires.
- An obsolete form of queer.
- To nest within a once-folded outer sheet (one or more sheets of paper of the same size similarly folded); impose and print (separate pages of type) so that they can be properly outsetted or insetted in consecutive order.
- n. One-twentieth of a ream of paper; a collection of twenty-four or twenty-five sheets of paper of the same size and quality, unfolded or having a single fold.
- n. bookbinding A set of leaves which are stitched together, originally a set of four pieces of paper (eight leaves, sixteen pages). This is most often a single signature (i.e. group of four), but may be several nested signatures.
- n. A book, poem, or pamphlet.
- v. bookbinding To prepare quires by stitching together leaves of paper.
- n. archaic A choir.
- n. The architectural part of a church in which the choir resides, between the nave and the sanctuary.
- v. intransitive To sing in concert.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete See choir.
- v. rare To sing in concert.
- n. A collection of twenty-four sheets of paper of the same size and quality, unfolded or having a single fold; one twentieth of a ream.
- n. a quantity of paper; 24 or 25 sheets
- Middle English quayer, four double sheets of paper, from Old French quaer, from Vulgar Latin *quaternus, from Latin quaternī, set of four, four each, from quater, four times; see kwetwer- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
“The rooff of the quire is very Curious, Carv'd stone and soe thinn to ye Leads one might grasp it between thumb and finger, and yet so well fixt as to be very strong.”
“The quire is properly St Georges Chappel whose Rooff is very high and Carved very Curiously, all free stone, so is the rest of ye Church.”
“The Lanthorn in ye quire is vastly high and delicately painted and fine Carv'd worke all of wood, in it the bells used to be hung, five, the dimention of ye biggest was so much when they rung them it shooke ye quire so and ye Carv'd worke that it was thought unsafe, therefore they were taken down.”
“Beyond the quire was the sanctuary that housed the tomb of the saint.”
The Pillars of the Earth
“There was a central door, which was called the quire door.”
“But the best thing about the quire is the wooden stall-work, of early decorated, very beautiful.”
“In the quire is a high tumbe, of one of them porturid with his wife.”
“A chancellor of York, Thomas de Farnylaw, leaves books, bound and unbound, to the Vicar of Waghen; a volume of sermons and a "quire" to the church of Embleton; and a Bible and Concordance to be chained in the north porch of St. Nicholas 'Church, Newcastle, "for common use, for the good of the soul of his lord William of Middleton" (1378).”
“I was still trying to decipher the language (what the heck is a "quire"??) when it was followed quickly by:”
“Hard, I found, to hold back a tear, and the goose pimples were not from the cold because it was a hot day, even in the quire.”
These user-created lists contain the word ‘quire’.
Ever get stuck with the random bunch of letters and a q and not know any words? Well, maybe this will help.
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
Words that make other words with the addition of one letter at the beginning. The resulting words are tagged "behead".
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
revising for a competition 30 games
in 24 hours
5-Letter words with J, X, Q or Z
ADDAX ADMIX AFFIX ANNEX ATAXY AUXIN AXELS AXIAL AXILE AXILS A...
The favorite words of Talking Tyrants
A list of words that WWF recognizes as valid - most are unusual words; some are simply high-scoring.
Words that I like.
Many may be lexicographically impotent due to a lack of citations and definition. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify this eventually.
Words used in the rare book trade (of which I was once a part). For more about how such books are put together, see hernesheir's excellent The Bindery.
Just another arbitrary list of words that come up for me today, June 20 2007
wonderful words from the world of q. Not limited to initial qs.
Looking for tweets for quire.