From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishquailquail1 /kweɪl/ noun [countable, uncountable] HBBa small fat bird with a short tail that is hunted for food or sport, or the meat from this bird
Examples from the Corpus
quail• Does that mean that a man is a better machine for running than a quail, or a chipmunk or mouse?• Combine remaining butter, mustard, honey, garlic, and lemon juice and slather over quail.• Tuck wings behind back and lightly season quail inside and out with salt and black pepper.• Season quail lightly with salt and pepper.• If the quail have been reared with siblings, both sexes prefer to mate with first cousins.• Because transplanted quail cells will behave normally in chick embryos, she realized she had an invaluable natural marker.• For his creation Malicki grills whole quail on long grapevine cuttings.quailquail2 verb [intransitive] literaryFRIGHTENED to be afraid and show it by shaking a little bit or moving back slightly SYN shrinkquail at She quailed visibly at the sight of the prison walls.→ See Verb tableExamples from the Corpus
quail• For the first time I quailed...• I felt like Frankenstein, quailing before the monster I had created.• It would seem that even senior officers were quailing, but go they did.• Though he quailed inwardly, he managed not to flinch.• Even now there were times when Valerie quailed, when she felt crushed.Origin quail1 (1300-1400) Old French quaille, from Medieval Latin quaccula quail2 (1400-1500) quail “to curdle” ((15-19 centuries)), from Latin coagulare; → COAGULATE 