quaker
NounOpen English WordNet
Noun (2)
- a member of the Religious Society of Friends founded by George Fox (the Friends have never called themselves Quakers)Synonyms: FriendType of ChristianExamples Penn, William PennMember of Religious Society of Friends, Society of Friends
- one who quakes and trembles with (or as with) fearSynonyms: tremblerType of coward
What does it mean? Question 1 of today’s quiz
Webster's Dictionary (1913)
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, noun, 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.— Encyclopædia Britannica
3. Zoology (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. Botany 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 Botany, a low American biennial plant (Houstonia cærulea), with pretty four-lobed corollas which are pale blue with a yellowish center; — also called bluets, and little innocents.
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), from GCIDE 0.54