Word.ws English Dictionary

quell

UK/kwɛl/

quell verb: to subdue, put down, or silence (someone or something); to force (someone) to submit.

Verb

quell (third-person singular simple present quells, present participle quelling, simple past and past participle quelled)

  1. (transitive) To subdue, put down, or silence (someone or something); to force (someone) to submit.
    • The nation obeyed the call, rallied round the sovereign, and enabled him to quell the disaffected minority.1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter I, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans...
    • Northward marching to quell the sudden revolt.1858 October 16, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Courtship of Miles Standish”, in The Courtship of Miles Standish, and Other Poems, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    crush
  2. (transitive) To suppress, to put an end to (something); to extinguish.
    • to quell grief
    • to quell the tumult of the soul
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To kill.
    • Like barbarous miſcreants, they quelled Virgins vnto death, […]1625, Yvo of Narbena, Matthew Paris, “Part of an Epistle Written by One Yvo of Narbena vnto the Archbishop of Burdeaux, Containing the Confession of an Englishman, as Touching the Barbarous Demeanour...
    • Well prov'd in that same day, when Jove those gyants quelled.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  4. (intransitive, obsolete) To be subdued or abated; to diminish.
    • Winter's wrath begins to quell.1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Iohn Wolfe for Iohn Harrison the yonger, […], →OCLC
  5. To die.
    • Yet he did quake and quaver, like to quell.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

Noun (1)

quell (plural quells)

  1. A subduing.
    • The quell of the rebellion raised Justinian to the acme of power.1903, Knowledge: A Monthly Record of Science
    • Hu had been supportive of Chiang's role throughout the northern expedition and the quell of southern rebellion.1978, Shiu Heng Chook, Chiang Kai-shek Close-up: A Personal View

Noun (2)

quell (plural quells)

  1. A source, especially a spring.
    • And when they had eaten, and sat resting in a grotto, he was still singing, and she was the goddess of his Muse, — the quell of living waters out of which he drew fresh strength for new lays.1894, George Egerton, Discords
    • Other excruciations replaced her namesake's loquacious quells so completely that when, during a lucid interval, she happened to open with her weak little hand a lavabo cock for a drink of water, the tepid lymph replied in its own lingo […]1969, Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, Ada, Or, Ardor, a Family Chronicle, Vintage, →ISBN
  2. An emotion or sensation which rises suddenly.
    • A quell of strength over took Robin with each of his words. She was about to fall apart, but Jacob was as brave as a warrior going into battle.2001, Zane Gates, The Cure, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 241
    • For a moment their eyes locked, and she felt a quell of anger rise above her apprehension. Reality struck with appalling clarity, yet she could only lie down, partially drugged and untidy as she was from such rough traveling.2011, Linda Lee Chaikin, Hawaiian Crosswinds, Moody Publishers, →ISBN

quell meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Telugu

quell in Tamil

அடக்கு, கீழ்ப்படுத்து, தணி

quell in Urdu

دبانا, کچل دینا, مٹانا, تسکین دینا, ذائل کرنا

quell in Bengali

বন্ধ করা, থামানো

quell in Telugu

కువెల్
More languagesFewer languages
quell in Malayalam
അടിച്ചമർത്തുക, സാന്ത്വനിപ്പിക്കുക, അവസാനിപ്പിക്കുക, കീഴടക്കുക
quell in Kannada
ಕ್ರೋಧ, ದಮನಗೊಳಿಸು, ತುಳಿದುಹಾಕು

Examples of quell in a sentence

  • However, after quelling Burnley's threat, Southampton failed to build on their growing danger culminating in Tadic's missed penalty.2014 December 13, Mandeep Sanghera, “Burnley 1-0 Southampton”, in BBC Sport:
  • The consequences have not been significant in terms of the quell of any of the three drugs into the United States.1994, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. international drug control policy: recent experience, future...
  • Each Martial Law was marked by the quell of civil liberties or human rights.1998, Mirza Arshad Ali Beg, Democracy Displaced in Pakistan: Case History of Disasters of Social Pollution:
  • But to make things even worse, this is the year of the Seventy-fifth Hunger Games, and that means it's also a Quarter Quell.2013, Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire, UK: Scholastic:

All 21 example sentences with quell

Synonyms of quell

Forms of quell

Verb
third-person singular presentquells
present participlequelling
past participlequelled
pastquelled
second-person singular present (archaic)quellest
second-person singular past (archaic)quelledst
third-person singular present (archaic)quelleth
Noun
pluralquells

Past tense of quell: quelled

Origin of quell

From Middle English quellen, from Old English cwellan (“to kill”), from Proto-West Germanic *kwalljan, from Proto-Germanic *kwaljaną (“to make die; kill”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH-. Cognate with German quälen (“to torment; agonise; smite”), Swedish kvälja (“to torment”), Icelandic kvelja (“to torture; torment”). Compare also Old Armenian կեղ (keł, “sore, ulcer”), Old Church Slavonic жаль (žalĭ, “pain”). See also kill, which may be its doublet.

From Middle English *quelle (suggested by the verb quellen (“to well up; gush forth”)), from Old English cwylla, cwiella (“spring; source”), from Proto-West Germanic *kwalljā (“spring, well”). Compare German Quelle.

Words formed from quell

Words that rhyme with quell

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about quell

What does quell mean?
Quell means to subdue, put down, or silence (someone or something); to force (someone) to submit.
What is quell in Tamil?
Quell in Tamil is அடக்கு, கீழ்ப்படுத்து, தணி. See Quell meaning in Tamil.
How do you use quell in a sentence?
However, after quelling Burnley's threat, Southampton failed to build on their growing danger culminating in Tadic's missed penalty.
What part of speech is quell?
Quell can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce quell?
Quell is pronounced /kwɛl/ (UK).
What is the past tense of quell?
The past tense of quell is quelled.

Words near quell in the dictionary

  1. quelching
  2. quelea
  3. queleas
  4. Quelepa
  5. Quelimane
  6. quell
  7. quellable
  8. quelle surprise
  9. quelled
  10. quelledst
  11. quellenforschung

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: quell (page history and authors); quell (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); quell (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); quell (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); quell (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); quell (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); quell (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-quell.ogg, En-au-quell.ogg.

Cite this entry: “quell.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/quell. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.