• quarter •
Pronunciation: kwor-dêr • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. A fourth of anything, one of four parts. 2. A zone or district of a city or other geographic area. 3. (Always plural) Assigned station or lodgings. 4. Mercy, leniency, safe harbor, refuge as 'to give no quarter to the enemy.'
Notes: Other dictionaries provide from 16 (Merriam-Webster) to 41 (Oxford English) repetitious definitions which center around the four above. It comes with an adjective-adverb, quarterly "every quarter of a year" and it may be used as a verb, meaning "to cut into quarters" or "to occupy or provide quarters in". The verb provides a base for a personal noun, quarterer.
In Play: The first sense of this word is by far the most often used: "Anita Job was a quarter of an hour late for her interview." The word may also refer to a specific district of a city or town: "The African Quarter of town was also known as the Jazz Quarter, enjoyed by a diversity of people."
Word History: Today's Good Word was captured from Old French quartier "quarter", inherited from Latin quartarius "fourth part", based on quartus "fourth". This word was handed down from PIE kwetwer- "four", found also behind Sanskrit catvara, Persian čatvar, Greek tessares, Latin quattuor, Armenian chors, Russian četyre, Serbian četiri, Polish cztery, Lithuanian keturi, Latvian četri, Irish ceathair, and Welsh pedwar (where Č = CH). How English four, Dutch and German vier, Danish fire, and Swedish fyra could have evolved from the same PIE word is controversial. They may have evolved from some Proto-Germanic form fedwores, supported by Old English feower, Gothic fidwor, and Old Saxon fiuwar. The initial F might have resulted from the influence of the next number, five. (Today we need to thank Barbara Beeton for suggesting today's remarkably Good Word.)
