Quarter

How to spell quarter

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce quarter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does quarter mean?

1. nounOne of four equal parts into which something is divided.
2. nounA coin worth twenty-five cents in the United States and Canada.
3. nounA particular district or part of a town or city.
4. verbTo provide someone with lodging or accommodation.

Quarter in a sentence

• noun

  He ate a quarter of the pizza and saved the rest for later.

• noun

  He dropped a quarter into the parking meter.

• noun

  The old artists' quarter is full of galleries and cafes.

• verb

  The army had to quarter its troops in nearby villages.

• noun

  Only a quarter of the budget remains for the rest of the year.

• noun

  The vending machine would only take a quarter or a dime.

Where does quarter come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin quartarius, meaning 'a fourth part', which was built on quartus, the Latin ordinal for 'fourth', itself derived from quattuor, 'four'. The sense of a fourth part covered everything from a measure of grain to a portion of a slaughtered animal, which is why we still speak of a 'hindquarter'. English took the word in through Old French quartier during the 1200s, and from there it branched out into many related meanings. One striking development is the use of 'quarter' for a district of a town, an extension of the idea of dividing a settlement into sections, and another is the phrase 'to give quarter', meaning to spare a defeated enemy, which may come from offering lodgings to prisoners. The spelling keeps the original 'qua' opening from quartus, and the 'ar' before the silent-feeling stretch is the part that trips writers who hear it as one smooth sound.

How the word is built

• quart- (from Latin quartus: fourth)
• -er (noun suffix)