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quirk

[kwurk]

Example Sentences Origin

noun

a peculiarity of action, behavior, or personality; mannerism: He is full of strange quirks.

a shift, subterfuge, or evasion; quibble.

a sudden twist or turn: He lost his money by a quirk of fate.

a flourish or showy stroke, as in writing.

Architecture.

an acute angle or channel, as one dividing two parts of a molding or one dividing a flush bead from the adjoining surfaces.

an area taken from a larger area, as a room or a plot of ground.

an enclosure for this area.

EXPAND

Obsolete. a clever or witty remark; quip.

COLLAPSE

adjective

formed with a quirk or channel, as a molding.

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Quirk is always a great word to know.

So is facade. Does it mean:

the front of a building, esp. an imposing or decorative one; any side of a building facing a public way or space and finished accordingly

describing an arch resting on imposts treated as downward continuations of the arch

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Origin:
1540–50; origin uncertain

Can be confused: quark, quirk.

Synonyms
1. See eccentricity.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To quirk

Example Sentences

Still, the quirk is more the rule than the exception for tennis players under pressure.

It is not entirely the quirk of an old man, whose long-term memory is better than his short-term.

If these urges were confined purely to the founding generation, this would be a historical quirk.

EXPAND

Still, the quirk is more the rule than the exception for tennis players under pressure.

It is not entirely the quirk of an old man, whose long-term memory is better than his short-term.

If these urges were confined purely to the founding generation, this would be a historical quirk.

The early arrival-albeit only by a minute-is due to a complex quirk of the leap-year calendar.

How remiss of me and an interesting quirk of academic isolation.

The survival of our village, and many others, is due to a quirk in history and to geography.

Fowler had suspected that the asymmetry in people came from a quirk of limiting the number of friends in the study.

Quirk displayed weapons that he said had been confiscated by unarmed officers during random searches.

It is a quirk of timing that he should face the scrutiny of a judiciary that so studiously ignored his predecessors.

But it's a quirk that could save him, his mother jokes, if he ever commits a crime and leaves a bit of blood behind.

Gould demonstrated a quirk of the human brain that is repeated in many biology texts.

The standard theory of bad moods is rooted in a psychological quirk known as ego depletion.

It is a quirk of human nature that the person who does an act of kindness may forget it, but the recipient does not.

And, as it happens, it is turning out to be a rather sensible quirk.

It is also a quirk of geography compounded by economics.

For many iridescent insects, color seems incidental, a quirk of the cuticle surface.

To put in more realistic terms, the anthropocene era will be a quirk of nature and known mostly for its brevity in geologic time.

They make a date for later in the evening, but fail to meet due to a quirk of fate.

It bends over backwards to tailor its products to every local quirk.

Which still doesn't explain the quirk about the staple.

Researchers have identified a genetic quirk common to a few deadly species of mushrooms.

Another well-known quirk to the pelican's beak is the pouch, capable of holding the liquid equivalent of two flushes of a toilet.

Although the article doesn't go into more detail about this quirk of his brain injury, he's not an isolated case.

Most late people see their lateness as a minor quirk and never realize that it is indeed arrogant.

But that quirk of timing has nothing to do with faster than light travel.

Simpson has described his quirk and attempted to translate it into a universal value.

Again, other than this quirk he's the best kid ever.

But the task is further complicated by a quirk of penguin cognition.

Perhaps it was all the scintillae in the wine, but this struck me as the quirk to end all quirks.

Quirk had ordered court officers to arrest the justice if he interfered with efforts to.

It is said that by some strange quirk of biology, dog owners and their pets come to resemble each other.

Then it settles into a minor, wholly manageable quirk.

In part, experts agree, the phenomenon is a statistical quirk.

No one is better at noticing the fashion accessory and quirk of taste that reveals.

Bates's sister, has the cute quirk of dressing up as famous movie stars.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

quirk (kwɜːk)

—n
1.	an individual peculiarity of character; mannerism or foible
2.	an unexpected twist or turn: a quirk of fate
3.	a continuous groove in an architectural moulding
4.	a flourish, as in handwriting

[C16: of unknown origin]

'quirky

—*adj*

'quirkily

—*adv*

'quirkiness

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

quirk

1560s, "quibble, evasion," of unknown origin, perhaps connected to Ger. quer (see queer) via notion of twisting and slanting; but its earliest appearance in western England dialect seems to argue against this source. Perhaps originally a technical term for a twist or flourish

EXPAND

in weaving. Sense of "peculiarity" is c.1600.

COLLAPSE

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Matching Quote

"It is not however, adulthood itself, but parenthood that forms the glass shroud of memory. For there is an interesting quirk in the memory of women. At 30, women see their adolescence quite clearly. At 30 a woman's adolescence remains a facet fitting into her current self.... At 40, however, memories of adolescence are blurred. Women of this age look much more to their earlier childhood for memories of themselves and of their mothers. This links up to her typical parenting phase."

-Terri Apter

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