Quote

How to spell quote

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce quote

What does quote mean?

1. verbTo repeat or copy out the exact words that someone else has spoken or written.
2. nounA passage or remark repeated from a particular source, usually attributed to its author.
3. nounA formal statement of the price at which a job or service will be carried out.

Quote in a sentence

• verb

  The reporter chose to quote the minister word for word.

• noun

  She opened the speech with a quote from a wartime leader.

• noun

  The builder sent a written quote for the kitchen refit.

• verb

  Please quote the relevant clause when you reply to the contract.

• noun

  The editor asked for the page number of every quote in the article.

• noun

  We compared each quote before hiring the cheaper plumber.

Where does quote come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Quote comes from the medieval Latin verb quotare, meaning 'to mark a book with numbers', which was built on the classical Latin quotus, meaning 'of what number' or 'how many in order'. Scribes originally quoted a text by numbering its chapters or sections so that a passage could be located and cited, and from this practice of marking and referencing the word came to mean repeating someone else's exact words. English picked it up in the late 1300s, first in the sense of citing a passage by its reference number, and the spoken and written sense of repeating words followed. The same numerical root survives in the everyday word 'quota', a fixed numerical share, which is a useful reminder that the quot- spelling carries an idea of counting. The financial sense, naming a stated price, grew naturally from the idea of citing a figure.

How the word is built

• quot- (from Latin quotus: of what number)
• -e