quaver

UK/ˈkweɪvə(ɹ)/US/ˈkweɪvə(ɹ)/

nounC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Other forms: quavers

A quaver is a trembling in the voice. A quaver of nerves, a quaver in the last line, hear the quaver.

It is the thing a speaker most wants to hide and the thing an audience notices first. A quaver in music is also a note, the one an American calls an eighth note.

Definitions of quaver

1nounquaverA trembling in the voice.C2
“There was a quaver in the last sentence and everybody heard it.”

quaver is a sound.

Where it comes from

Middle English quaveren, to tremble, a frequentative of quave, from an old root meaning to shake.

Middle English
quaveren
English, today
quaver

Built from

cwavien · Middle English — to tremble

From Middle English quaveren, frequentative form of quaven, cwavien (“to tremble”), equivalent to quave + er. Cognate with Low German quabbeln (“to quiver”), German quabbeln, quappeln (“to quiver”). More at quave, quab, quiver.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

quaver in the wild

An eighth note (American) or a quaver (British) is a musical note played for one eighth the duration of a whole note (semibreve).
Eighth note
In Baroque music, a Lombard rhythm consists of a stressed sixteenth note, or semiquaver, followed by a dotted eighth note, or dotted quaver.
Lombard rhythm
The name comes from the musical note called a quaver, as both the note and the crisp have a curly shape.
Quavers
Only eighth notes (quavers) or shorter can be beamed.
Beam (music)
When the male finds a female's burrow, he will quaver on the lid with his legs until the female appears.
Cteniza sauvagesi

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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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