Word Origin & History
Quaker1651, 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 was never an official name of the Religious Society of Friends. Quaker gun (1809, Amer.Eng.) was a log painted black and propped up to look from a distance like a cannon.