quire

UK/ˈkwaɪ.ə(ɹ)/

quire noun: one-twentieth of a ream of paper; a collection of twenty-four or twenty-five sheets of paper of the same size and quality, unfolded or having a single fold. Also the uncommon form of choir.

Image: Ib Rasmussen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

quire (plural quires)

One-twentieth of a ream of paper; a collection of twenty-four or twenty-five sheets of paper of the same size and quality, unfolded or having a single fold.
- Under the year 1533 we are told that the ream contained twenty quires.1882, James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, volume 4, page 592
- […] and we must accept the fact that all those good novels, Villette, Emma, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, were written by women without more experience of life than could enter the house of a clergyman; written too in the common sitting-room of that respectable house and by women so poor that...1929, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, paperback edition, Penguin Books, page 71
A set of leaves which are stitched together, originally a set of four pieces of paper (eight leaves, sixteen pages). This is most often a single signature (i.e. group of four), but may be several nested signatures.
A book, poem, or pamphlet.

Verb (1)

quire (third-person singular simple present quires, present participle quiring, simple past and past participle quired)

To prepare quires by stitching together leaves of paper.
- Now, in the first folio volume of 1616, the paging, signatures, and quiring are continuous and regular throughout.1870, William White, Notes and Queries, volume 42
- This is a natural point at which to ask why quiring went out of fashion.1938, The Dolphin: A Journal of the Making of the Books, number 3

Verb (2)

quire (third-person singular simple present quires, present participle quiring, simple past and past participle quired)

Poetic spelling of choir (“to sing in concert”).
- Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven / Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: / There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st / But in his motion like an angel sings, / Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; / Such harmony is in immortal souls; / But whilst this muddy vesture of...c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
- I saw the 'potamus take wing / Ascending from the damp savannas, / And quiring angels round him sing / The praise of God, in loud hosannas.1920, T. S. Eliot, “Hippopotamus”, in Poems

Also used as

quire is also the uncommon form of choir.

quire is also the archaic spelling of choir.

Forms of quire

Noun
plural	quires
Verb
third-person singular present	quires
present participle	quiring
past participle	quired
past	quired

Origin of quire

From Middle English quayer, from Anglo-Norman quaier and Old French quaer, from Latin quaternus (“fourfold”), from quater (“four times”). Doublet of cahier.

From Middle English quer, quere, from Old French quer, from Latin chorus, from Ancient Greek χορός (khorós, “company of dancers or singers”). Doublet of choir, chorus, and hora.

Words formed from quire

Phrases with quire

quire kens

Words that rhyme with quire

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about quire

What does quire mean?: Quire means one-twentieth of a ream of paper; a collection of twenty-four or twenty-five sheets of paper of the same size and quality, unfolded or having a single fold.
What part of speech is quire?: Quire can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce quire?: Quire is pronounced /ˈkwaɪ.ə(ɹ)/ (UK).
What is the plural of quire?: The plural of quire is quires.

Words near quire in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: quire (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-choir.ogg.

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