Quill

How to spell quill

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce quill

What does quill mean?

1. nounA pen made from the hollow shaft of a large feather, dipped in ink for writing.
2. nounOne of the sharp, stiff spines covering a porcupine or hedgehog.

Quill in a sentence

• The museum displays a quill once used to sign the old treaty.

• The dog yelped after a porcupine quill lodged in its nose.

• She dipped the quill in ink and copied out the wedding invitations.

• Each defensive quill on the porcupine detaches easily when touched.

Where does quill come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Quill first appears in Middle English around the 1400s as 'quil' or 'quille', meaning a hollow reed or stalk and then the hollow shaft of a feather. Its earlier roots are genuinely uncertain, but it is generally linked to Middle Low German 'quiele' and to a wider family of Germanic words for a reed, pipe, or hollow stem. Because the strong central shaft of a large feather is naturally hollow, the same word came to mean the writing pen made by trimming that shaft and dipping it in ink. From the idea of a stiff, pointed shaft it also came to name the sharp defensive spines of a porcupine or hedgehog. The doubled 'll' simply follows the normal English pattern for short single-syllable words ending in that sound, like 'still' and 'drill', which is the main thing to remember when spelling it.

How the word is built

• quill (single root word, of uncertain Germanic origin; no prefix or suffix)