Quits

How to spell quits

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce quits

What does quits mean?

1. adjectiveOn equal terms with someone, with neither party owing the other anything.
2. verbThird-person singular present form of 'quit': to stop doing something or to leave a job or place.

Quits in a sentence

• adjective

  Once she repaid the twenty pounds, they were quits.

• verb

  He quits every job within a year of starting it.

• adjective

  She covered lunch and he covered the taxi, so now they are quits.

• verb

  Whenever the work gets hard, she quits before finishing.

Where does quits come from?

Language of origin: French

This word grew out of the Old French verb quiter, meaning 'to release, discharge, or set free', which in turn came from the Medieval Latin quitus or quietus, meaning 'free' or 'clear' (originally 'at rest' or 'quiet', the same root that gives us 'quiet' and 'acquit'). In medieval usage someone who had cleared a debt was said to be 'quit' of it, that is, released from the obligation. From the 1400s onward the plural-looking form 'quits' settled into the fixed phrase 'to be quits', describing two people who owe each other nothing because their accounts have balanced out. The separate everyday sense, where 'quits' is simply the present-tense form of the verb 'to quit' meaning to stop or leave, comes from the same source: stopping a job or a habit is, in a sense, releasing yourself from it. The trailing -ts cluster, with the silent logic of 'quiet' lurking behind it, is what occasionally trips writers up.

How the word is built

• quit (free, clear, discharged)
• -s