Dictionary
Thesaurus
Reference
Translate
Web
Quaker - 5 dictionary results

Quak⋅er

[kwey-ker]
–noun
a popular name for a member of the Religious Society of Friends.

Origin:
1590–1600; quake + -er 1


Quak⋅er⋅ish, Quak⋅er⋅like, adjective
Quak·er   (kwā'kər)   
n.  A member of the Society of Friends.

[From quake (from an early leader's admonishment to "tremble at the word of the Lord").]
Quak'er·ism n., Quak'er·ly adv. & adj.

Quaker

Quak"er\, n. 1. One who quakes.

2. One of a religious sect founded by George Fox, of Leicestershire, England, about 1650, -- the members of which call themselves Friends. They were called Quakers, originally, in derision. See Friend, n., 4.

Fox's teaching was primarily a preaching of repentance . . . The trembling among the listening crowd caused or confirmed the name of Quakers given to the body; men and women sometimes fell down and lay struggling as if for life. --Encyc. Brit.

3. (Zo["o]l.) (a) The nankeen bird. (b) The sooty albatross. (c) Any grasshopper or locust of the genus (Edipoda; -- so called from the quaking noise made during flight.

Quaker buttons. (Bot.) See Nux vomica.

Quaker gun, a dummy cannon made of wood or other material; -- so called because the sect of Friends, or Quakers, hold to the doctrine, of nonresistance.

Quaker ladies (Bot.), a low American biennial plant (Houstonia c[ae]rulea), with pretty four-lobed corollas which are pale blue with a yellowish center; -- also called bluets, and little innocents.

Quaker

A member of the Religious Society of Friends. The Quakers are a group of Christians who use no scripture and believe in great simplicity in daily life and in worship. Their services consist mainly of silent meditation.

Note: Quakers have traditionally been committed to pacifism.
Note: Pennsylvania was settled by a group of Quakers fleeing religious persecution.

Quaker 
1651, 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.
Search another word or see Quaker on Thesaurus | Reference