The Word of the Day

Word of the Day

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

quietus

\kwy-EE-tuhs\ , noun;

1. Final discharge or acquittance, as from debt or obligation.

2. Removal from activity; rest; death.

3. Something that serves to suppress or quiet.

Quotes:

• I have put a quietus upon that ticking. Depend upon it, the ticking will trouble you no more. - Herman Melville, "The Apple-Tree Table",
• Consider a small police-blotter report from an 1875 issue of The Grant County Herald in Silver City, N[ew] M[exico]: "We learn that on Friday, Jose Garcia, who lives at the Chino copper mines, caught his wife in flagrante delicto -- we leave the reader to guess the crime -- Jose, then and there, gave her the quietus with an axe." - Thomas Kunkel, "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Six-Shooter", New York Times, August 30, 1998
• It was after eleven when Fanning put the quietus to his day, retreating to the "Hospitality Suite" where he'd been hanging his hat these past weeks. - David Long, The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux
• During his final illness, someone asked Schiller how he felt: "calmer and calmer" was the reply. It was a quietus he richly deserved. - Roger Kimball, "Schiller's 'Aesthetic Education", New Criterion, March 2001