quail

1. 1.

   draw back, as with fear or pain

   “she flinched when they showed the slaughtering of the calf”

   Synonymsflinchsquinchfunkcringeshrinkwincerecoil

   Broadermove

   Narrowershrink back

Other forms of quail

plural

quails·

past tense

quailed·

present participle

quailing·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about quail

What does quail mean?

quail means "flesh of quail; suitable for roasting or broiling if young; otherwise must be braised". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in quail?

quail has 1 syllable: quail. In IPA it is /ˈkweɪl/.

What is another word for quail?

Close synonyms include flinch, squinch, funk, cringe, shrink. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is quail a common word?

quail is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.