queach

English

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.) Compare quick.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kwiːt͡ʃ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːtʃ

Noun

queach (plural queaches)

1. (archaic) A thick, bushy plot; a thicket.
   • 1567, Arthur Golding, Ovid's Metamorphoses: the first booke, lines 137–8:

     Men gan to shroud themselves in house. Their houses were the thickes,
     And bushie queaches, hollow caves, or hardels made of stickes.

   • 1614–1615, Homer, “The Nineteenth Book of Homer’s Odysseys”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., Homer’s Odysses. […], London: […] Rich[ard] Field [and William Jaggard], for Nathaniell Butter, published 1615, →OCLC; republished in The Odysseys of Homer, […], volume II, London: John Russell Smith, […], 1857, →OCLC:

     They found they lodged a boar of bulk extreme,
     In such a queach as never any beam

     The spelling has been modernized.

References

• “queach”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.