Other forms: quakes, quaking
To quake is to shake, from fear or from movement of the ground. Quake with fear, the ground quaked, quaking.
The fear sense is the commoner one and is slightly literary or joking: quaking in his boots. The ground sense survives chiefly in earthquake and in quake as a shortened noun, which is standard in American reporting. Note that the Quakers were named as an insult — a judge is said to have mocked them for bidding him tremble at the word of the Lord — and the group adopted the name.
1verbquakeTo shake from fear or from ground movement.
“The little boy quaked with fear as the thunder crashed overhead.”
2nounearthquakeAn earthquake.
“The quake destroyed hundreds of homes along the coast.”
quake is a shaking.
Old English cwacian is probably imitative, from a Germanic root about shaking. Quiver, quaver and quake all sound like what they mean, which is unusual for words this old.
Proto-Germanic
*kwakōną — to shake, quiver, tremble
Old English
cwacian — to quake, tremble, chatter
Middle English
quaken
English, today
quake
From Middle English quaken, from Old English cwacian (“to quake, tremble, chatter”), from Proto-Germanic kwakōną (“to shake, quiver, tremble”), itself likely of imitative origin. Related to Old English cweċċan (“to shake, swing, move, vibrate, shake off, give up”) (see quitch), Dutch kwakkelen (“to ail, be ailing”), German Quackelei (“chattering”), Danish kvakle (“to bungle”), Latin vexō (“toss, shake violently, jostle, vex”), Irish bogadh (“a move, movement, shift, change”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire