quail

UK/kweɪl/US/kweɪl/

nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,370 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: quails

A quail is a tiny round game bird, and its small speckled eggs. Roast quail, quail eggs, a covey of quail.

It is the smallest game bird eaten in Europe and one bird is a single portion. The eggs are used in cooking for their size and their marbled shells. As a verb, to quail means to lose courage, which is a separate word entirely.

Definitions of quail

1nounquailA tiny round game bird.B2+
“A quail ran across the path and hid in the long grass.”

quail is a bird.

Where it comes from

Old French quaille names the bird, probably imitating its call. The verb to quail is an unrelated word.

Proto-Germanic
*kwelaną — to suffer
Proto-West Germanic
*kwelan
Old Dutch
*quelan
Middle Dutch
queilen
Middle English
quaylen
English, today
quail

From Middle English quaylen, from Middle Dutch queilen, quēlen, from Old Dutch quelan, from Proto-West Germanic kwelan, from Proto-Germanic kwelaną (“to suffer”). a doublet of queal.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Birds

Practise this word

quail in the wild

Despite its secretive nature, the northern bobwhite is one of the most familiar quails in eastern North America, because it is frequently the only quail in its range.
Northern bobwhite
The collective noun for a group of quail is a flock, covey, or bevy.
Quail
Old World quail are placed in the family Phasianidae, and New World quail are placed in the family Odontophoridae.
Quail
The New World quail are small birds that, despite their similar appearance and habits to the Old World quail, belong to a different family known as the Odontophoridae.
New World quail
The legs of most New World quails are short but powerful, with some species having very thick legs for digging.
New World quail

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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