quad
English
editEtymology
editShortened, via clipping or abbreviation, from various English terms. Ultimately related to Latin quattuor (“4”); compare quadri-, quadruple.
The typography senses are from the abbreviation quad. for obsolete quadrat; the keyboard command comes from the verb sense.
Pronunciation
edit- (General American) IPA(key): /kwɑd/
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /kwɒd/
Audio (General Australian): (file) - Rhymes: -ɒd
Noun
editquad (plural quads)
- (typography, obsolete) Abbreviation of quadrat. [18th to 19th century]
- (letterpress typography) A blank metal block used to fill short lines of type. [from 1780s]
- 1853 April 16, Charles Dickens, Household Words[1], number 160, page 148:
- “Quadrats, sir. We call 'em quads.” . . . Quads are the spaces left between the paragraphs that come white on the paper. If you look here, at this page that is set-up, you will see that they are deeper than the spaces left between the words and letters—regular little trenches.
- 1979, Marshall Lee, Bookmaking, page 110:
- Horizontal spacing is further divided into multiples and fractions of the em. The multiples are called quads. The fractions are called spaces.
- 2005, Phil Baines, Andrew Haslam, Type & Typography, 2nd edition, page 91:
- Other larger spaces – known as quads – were used to space out lines.
- (printing slang) A joke used to fill long days of setting type.
- (typography, phototypesetting and digital typesetting) A keyboard command which aligns text with the left or right margin, or centred between them. In combination, as quad left, quad right, or quad centre.
- (letterpress typography) A blank metal block used to fill short lines of type. [from 1780s]
- (informal) A quadrangle (quadrangular courtyard). [from 1780s]
- 1880, William Blades, The Enemies of Books, page 38:
- Gilt-backed books on gilded shelf or table caught the eye, and as you turned your glance from the luxurious interiors to the well-shorn lawn in the Quad with its classic fountain also gilded by sunbeams, the mental vision saw plainly written over the whole "The Union of Luxury and Learning."
- 2014, Walker Orenstein, for Norwest Asian Weekly, Cherry trees from Japan to grace UW campus[2]:
- Every spring, the quad on the University of Washington (UW) campus transforms from a peaceful green space to a bustling habitat for hundreds of shuttering cameras, families, and onlookers.
- (colloquial, dated) A horse, from colloquial or humorous quadruped specifically for horse. [from 1850s]
- 1934, John Buchan, The Free Fishers, page 258:
- The quads is all right, barrin’ that the bay is blind o’ the left eye, and the chestnut a bit weak in the off fore.
- Something that is quadruple (four times) the usual amount, number, etc.
- A poster advertising a cinematic film release, measuring forty by thirty inches, four times the area of crown paper. [c. 1910]
- (skating) A quadruple, a jump with four revolutions in the air.
- A serving of four shots of espresso; (attributive) containing four shots of espresso.
- 2023 May 7, Josh, “How to Order a Quad Over Ice + Fun Alternatives”, in Angry Espresso[4], archived from the original on 2023-05-28:
- A grande iced quad latte with milk is $6.65 + tax, whereas a quad over ice with milk added at the self-serve station is only $3.65 + tax
- A skate with four wheels.
- 2018, Elicia Hyder, Lights Out Lucy: Roller Derby 101:
- These are the quads I recommend for newbies.
- 2014, Brigitte Legendre, A Skater's Business, page 16:
- When you can skate, inline, ice, quads are all equally enjoyable as long as they are of good enough quality.
- Clipping of quadruplet (“a set of four; one of a set of four”). [from 1890s]
- 1991, Alain Gelbman, Mah Jong: One Step at a Time, page 7:
- The Pair, Triples, and Quads can be formed with both Honor and Suit Tiles.
- 1999, Jennifer Kelley, Great Book of Domino Games, page 70:
- Object of the game: To use up all the tiles by playing them in quads. A quad is four consecutive numbers running in ascending or descending order, and played in a straight line.
- 2002, Experiments with Plants: teacher’s guide, page 18:
- Each person on the team could be exclusively responsible for taking care of and keeping records for one set of four plants (a quad).
- (electronics, telecommunications) A group of four insulated wires twisted together to form two circuits of two wires each. [from 1920s]
- (radio) A quad antenna, a directional radio antenna consisting of multiple loop antennas. [from 1930s]
- (informal) A quadruplet, one of four babies born during the same birth.
- 1980, Linda Schreiber, Marathon Mom: The Wife and Mother Running Book, page 18:
- My husband Jim was home […] and so were my children: Samantha, 4, and the quadruplets, Zachary, Danielle, Amanda, and Elisabeth. The quads were eighteen months old and in their usual fine form — singing, banging, pushing each other, and toddling into impossible places.
- (chess) A kind of round-robin tournament between four players, where each participant plays every other participant once.
- (Mormonism) The Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price bound in a single volume.
- (poker slang, attributive) Of or relating to quads (four of a kind).
- 2001, Alfred Alvarez, Poker: Bets, Bluffs and Bad Beats, page 90:
- Both players had four of a kind. A had quad fours; B had quad deuces.
- (informal) The quadriceps muscle. [from 1950s]
- 2010, Adam Garett, “Fried Hams”, in Reps!, 17:23:
- Aesthetics aside, if you train your quads while neglecting your hamstrings, you're setting yourself up for an eventual injury.
- (informal) Quadruplex videotape. [from 1960s]
- 1975, [US] House Subcommittee on Communications, Telecommunications Facilities and Demonstration Act of 1975, page 11:
- The high band color quadruplex format is recommended for the following reasons:
1. Quad is now the accepted industry standard world-wide with over 90% of all television broadcast operations using this format for video recording.
- (informal) A quadriplegic person. [from 1970s]
- A unit of energy equivalent to a quadrillion BTU (1015 BTU). [from 1970s]
- A quad bike. [from 1980s]
- 2000, Sam Llewellyn, Wonder Dog, page 20:
- Cad was a ferocious driver of a quad, much given to wheelies, jumps and stunts in general.
- (informal, computer graphics) A quadrilateral. [from 1980s]
- 1989, ACM SIGGRAPH '89 Course Notes, New York: Association for Computing Machinery, page 48:
- System Rasterization Primitives • Polygons • Triangles, Trapezoids, Quads
- 2006, Koen Beets, Johan Claes, Frank Van Reeth, “Optimizing Mesh Construction for Quad/Triangle Schemes”, in Hans-Peter Seidel, Tomoyuki Nishita, Qunsheng Peng, editors, Advances in Computer Graphics, page 711:
- schemes have appeared which generate good results when applied to meshes which contain both triangular and quadrilateral regions. These kinds of schemes turn out to be very useful for modelling animations, because there, in symmetric (e.g. cylindrical) areas, quads and vertices with valence 4 are preferred
- 2010, Tony Mullen, Claudio Andaur, Blender Studio Projects: Digital Movie-Making, page 91:
- Tris and quads have different areas of functionality. In real-time graphics, tris are the norm because they provide the most basic geometric representations of planes.
- (informal) A quadcopter. [from 2000s]
- 2017 May 19, Ed Darack, “A Brief History of Quadrotors”, in Air & Space Magazine[5]:
- Today you can buy quadrotor drones—also known as quadcopters—of just about any kind, for just about any price. The extremely wealthy can buy gold-plated quads, and the rest of us can buy tiny plastic ones.
- (informal) A quadrupel beer.
- 2012, Bruce Glassman, Brew Food: Great Beer-inspired Appetizers, Main Courses, and Desserts, page 142:
- So what’s the beer for this great dish? You guessed it — Belgian quad. “I don’t usually pair the same beer with the one used in the recipe,” Bill explains, “but drinking a great quad with this dish really elevates both the food and the beer in a special way.”
Derived terms
edittypography
quadruplet
other senses
Translations
editquadrangle — see quadrangle
quadruplet — see quadruplet
quadrilateral — see quadrilateral
quad bike — see quad bike
Adjective
editquad (not comparable)
- Quadruple, four times the usual size or quantity. [from 1880s]
- 1896, Sunderland. Re Mawson, Phillips & Co., Ld., in Liquidation[6]:
- Printing Plant Machinery, Type, Material, Fittings, Stock-in-Trade, Paper, &c., including QUAD-CROWN CYLINDER MACHINE, With Flyers, Riders, &c., by Miller & Richard.
- 1998, Kip Ward, Mike van Mantgem, Axel Floyd, Quake for Nintendo 64 (Prima’s Unauthorized Game Secrets), page 23:
- Around the corner waits a Quad Damage rune, which you can activate before returning to the Teleporter and heading for the Gold Key.
- 2014, Brian Johnson, 21 Best Tablets for You This Holiday Season of 2014, page 44:
- With Mali-400 MP4 GPU, 2GB of RAM and a quad-core Cortex-A9 processor, this tablet is more than capable to handle even the latest graphics intense games
- 2015 May, Chris Woodward, “Yamaha 190 FSH”, in Sport Fishing, volume 30, page 85:
- SeaStar Solutions, which makes systems for twin- and triple-outboard powered boats, now offers its Optimus electronic power steering (EPS) for single- and quad-powered boats.
- (paper) Quadrille, marked with squares.
Derived terms
editVerb
editquad (third-person singular simple present quads, present participle quadding, simple past and past participle quadded)
- (typography, letterpress typography, transitive, intransitive) To fill spaces in a line of type with quads. Also quad out.
- (typography, phototypesetting and digital typesetting, transitive, intransitive) To align text with the left or right margin, or centre it.
- (transitive) To twist four individually insulated conductors together as two pairs of twisted wires that are then twisted together.
- 1901, Report of the Industrial Commission on Transportation, page 232:
- Can you "quad" the cable?
- 1961, Telecommunications, page 690:
- The star quadding of the wires ensures a reduction in the diameters of cables and their weight […]
- 1965, Telephone Cable Splicing: Cable Terminations and Cable Repairs, United States. Department of the Army, page 906:
- The conductors in quadded cables are tinned and may also be enameled.
- (intransitive) To ride a quad bike.
- 2006 April 27, Christopher Thrall, “There’s a mud-eating grin to be seen after every quadding adventure”, in Vue Weekly, Edmonton, page 31:
- visibility was perfect and mud was plentiful for our quadding adventure.
Derived terms
editSee also
editBasque
editEtymology
editPronunciation
editNoun
editquad inan
Declension
editDeclension of quad (inanimate, ending in consonant)
indefinite | singular | plural | |
---|---|---|---|
absolutive | quad | quada | quadak |
ergative | quadek | quadak | quadek |
dative | quadi | quadari | quadei |
genitive | quaden | quadaren | quaden |
comitative | quadekin | quadarekin | quadekin |
causative | quadengatik | quadarengatik | quadengatik |
benefactive | quadentzat | quadarentzat | quadentzat |
instrumental | quadez | quadaz | quadez |
inessive | quadetan | quadean | quadetan |
locative | quadetako | quadeko | quadetako |
allative | quadetara | quadera | quadetara |
terminative | quadetaraino | quaderaino | quadetaraino |
directive | quadetarantz | quaderantz | quadetarantz |
destinative | quadetarako | quaderako | quadetarako |
ablative | quadetatik | quadetik | quadetatik |
partitive | quadik | — | — |
prolative | quadtzat | — | — |
Further reading
edit- “quad”, in Euskaltzaindiaren Hiztegia, Euskaltzaindia
Catalan
editPronunciation
editNoun
editquad m (plural quads)
- Clipping of quadricicle.
Dutch
editEtymology
editPronunciation
editAudio: (file)
Noun
editquad m (plural quads, diminutive quadje n)
Italian
editNoun
editquad m (invariable)
Middle Scots
editAlternative forms
editEtymology
editInherited from Middle English qued, from Old English cwēad.
Pronunciation
edit- (Early Scots) IPA(key): [kwad]
- (Early Middle Scots) IPA(key): [kwad]
- (Late Middle Scots) IPA(key): [kwad]
Adjective
editquad (comparative quader)
Usage notes
editOnly the comparative is attested.
Further reading
edit- “quad”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC, reproduced from William A[lexander] Craigie, A[dam] J[ack] Aitken [et al.], editors, A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue: […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1931–2002, →OCLC.
Old High German
editVerb
editquad
Polish
editEtymology
editUnadapted borrowing from English quad.
Pronunciation
editNoun
editquad m inan
- quad bike
- Synonyms: czterokołowiec, wszędołaz, kład
Declension
editDeclension of quad
Further reading
editSpanish
editNoun
editquad f (plural quads)
Further reading
edit- “quad”, in Diccionario de la lengua española (in Spanish), online version 23.7, Royal Spanish Academy, 2023 November 28
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