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Pierce vs Quill - What's the difference?

pierce | quill |

As verbs the difference between pierce and quill

is that pierce is to puncture; to break through while quill is to pierce or be pierced with quills.

As a noun quill is

the lower shaft of a feather, specifically the region lacking barbs.

pierce

English

Verb

  • to puncture; to break through
    • The diver pierced the surface of the water with scarcely a splash.
    to pierce''' the enemy's line; a shot '''pierced the ship
  • * Dryden
    • I pierce her tender side.
  • to create a hole in the skin for the purpose of inserting jewelry
    • Can you believe he pierced his tongue?
  • to break or interrupt abruptly
    • A scream pierced the darkness.
  • (figurative) To penetrate; to affect deeply.
    • to pierce a mystery
  • * Alexander Pope
    • pierced with grief
  • * Shakespeare
    • Can no prayers pierce thee?

    Derived terms

    * piercing

    Descendants

    * Japanese:

    Anagrams

    *

    quill

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • The lower shaft of a feather, specifically the region lacking barbs.
  • A pen made from a feather.
  • (figuratively) Any pen.Oxford English Dictionary , 2nd ed., 1989.
    • He picked up his quill and wrote a poem.
  • A sharply pointed, barbed, and easily detached needle-like structure that grows on the skin of a porcupine or hedgehog as a defense against predators.
  • A thin piece of bark, especially of cinnamon or cinchona, curled up into a tube.
  • The pen of a squid.
  • (music) The plectrum with which musicians strike the strings of certain instruments.
  • (music) The tube of a musical instrument.
  • * Milton
    • He touched the tender stops of various quills .
  • Something having the form of a quill, such as the fold or plain of a ruff, or (weaving) a spindle, or spool, upon which the thread for the woof is wound in a shuttle.

    • Verb

    (en verb)
  • To pierce or be pierced with quills.
  • * 1966 , David Francis Costello, The World of the Porcupine , J. B. Lippincott & Company, page 66:
    • Coyotes, bears, and mountain lions which occasionally kill porcupines are sometimes quilled .
  • * 2010 , Mark Parman, A Grouse Hunter's Almanac: The Other Kind of Hunting , University of Wisconsin Press, ISBN 978-0-299-24920-5, page 49:
    • Then one of my dogs got quilled , and it happened again a month later. After putting the dog in a headlock, yanking out several dozen quills, and spurting blood all over myself and the decking of the back porch, I at least understood his antiporcupine venom.
  • (figuratively) To write.
  • * 1939 , , Finnegans Wake , page 182:
    • Nibs never would have quilled a seriph to sheepskin.
  • * 1976 , , Investigative Poetry , City Lights (1976), page 11:
    • One has only to recall that Coleridge and Wordsworth one day were lounging by the sea shore, while nearby sat an English police agent on snitch patrol prepared to rush to headquarters to quill a report about the conversation.
  • To form fabric into small, rounded folds.
  • To decorate with quillwork.
  • * 2007 , David J. Wishart, Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians , University of Nebraska Press (2007), ISBN 0-8032-9862-5, page 32:
    • Another characteristic of Plains Indians was the fairly strict division between art made and used by men and art made and used by women. Although men and women sometimes cooperated, women usually painted or quilled very balanced, controlled geometric designs on dresses, moccasins, robes, bags, and containers.

    References

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