Word.ws English Dictionary

quelling

quelling is the present participle and gerund of quell.

Noun

quelling (countable and uncountable, plural quellings)

  1. The act by which something is quelled.
    • There is a snaky gleam in her hard grey eye, as of anticipated rounds of buttered toast, relays of hot chops, worryings and quellings of young children, sharp snappings at poor Berry, and all the other delights of her Ogress's castle.1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, “Retribution”, in Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 594
  2. RNA interference.

Meaning of quell

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...
    Synonyms:
    crush
  2. (transitive) To suppress, to put an end to (something); to extinguish.
    • to quell grief
  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...
  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

See all 8 meanings of quell

Adjective

quelling (comparative more quelling, superlative most quelling)

  1. causing something to quell or be quelled

Forms of quelling

Noun
pluralquellings
Adjective
comparativemore quelling
superlativemost quelling

Words formed from quelling

Questions about quelling

What does quelling mean?
Quelling means the act by which something is quelled.
What is quelling the present participle and gerund of?
Quelling is the present participle and gerund of quell.
What part of speech is quelling?
Quelling can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of quelling?
The plural of quelling is quellings.

Words near quelling in the dictionary

  1. quellenforschung
  2. queller
  3. quellers
  4. quellest
  5. quelleth
  6. quelling
  7. quellingly
  8. quellings
  9. quellio
  10. quellios
  11. quellkörper

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: quelling (page history and authors); quell (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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Cite this entry: “quelling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/quelling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.