Word.ws English Dictionary

quirk

UK/kwɜːk//kwɝk/

quirk noun: an idiosyncrasy; a slight glitch, a mannerism; something unusual about the manner or style of something or someone. Also the alternative form of querk.

Noun

quirk (plural quirks)

  1. An idiosyncrasy; a slight glitch, a mannerism; something unusual about the manner or style of something or someone.
    • The car steers cleanly, but the gearshift has a few quirks.
    Synonyms:
    foible
  2. An acute angle dividing a molding; a groove that runs lengthwise between the upper part of a molding and a soffit.
  3. (archaic) A quibble, evasion, or subterfuge.
    • Had you no quirk / To avoid gullage, sir, by such a creature?1605 (first performance), Ben[jamin] Jonson, Ben: Ionson His Volpone or The Foxe, [London]: […] [George Eld] for Thomas Thorppe, published 1607, →OCLC, (please specify the Internet Archive page)
    • Let us not be too curious in prying into Gods arke, leaſt vve ſmart like the flie fluttering about the candle, for God is a conſuming fire to thoſe that vvill be ſporting themſelves in the quirks of their vvit about his ſacred myſteries.1657, Samuel Purchas, “[The Second Part. Being Meditations and Observations, Theologicall, and Morall, upon the Nature of Bees.] The First Century.”, in A Theatre of Politicall Flying-Insects. […]...

Verb

quirk (third-person singular simple present quirks, present participle quirking, simple past and past participle quirked)

  1. (ambitransitive) To (cause to) move with a wry jerk.
    • He quirked an eyebrow.
    • The corners of her mouth quirked.
  2. (transitive) To furnish with a quirk or channel.
  3. To alter in a unique and unusual way.
    • But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind.1968, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd edition, London: Fontana Press, published 1993, page 19
  4. (archaic, intransitive) To use verbal tricks or quibbles.
    • I have stung her and wrung her,
      The venom is working;—
      And if you had hung her
      With canting and quirking,
      She could not be deader than she will be soon1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oedipus Tyrannus; Or, Swellfoot The Tyrant: A Tragedy in Two Acts

Proper noun capitalized: Quirk

Quirk

  1. A surname.
    • Assemblymember Bill Quirk (D-Hayward) has introduced a bill to address power outages caused by metallic film balloons when they come into contact with powerlines.2018 February 14, “Reducing Power Outages Caused by Metallic Balloons is Focus of Bill Introduced Today”, in California State Assembly Democratic Caucus, archived from the original on 13 Feb 2020

Also used as

quirk is also the alternative form of querk.

quirk meaning in Nepali and Indonesian

quirk in Nepali

क्विर्क

quirk in Indonesian

idiosyncrasy
kekocakan

Examples of quirk in a sentence

  • In a quirk of German politics, the governing coalitions are often given names.
  • She has learned about me, and how I respond to its quirks—like a river flowing with hiccups.
  • Pronouncing a Spanish loan word in an Italian way is one of the many quirks of English.

All 31 example sentences with quirk

Synonyms of quirk

Forms of quirk

Noun
pluralquirks
Verb
third-person singular presentquirks
present participlequirking
past participlequirked
pastquirked

Plural of quirk: quirks

Origin of quirk

First attested in the 1540s. Of uncertain origin. Possibly from Middle English *querk, from Old Norse kverk (“a bend or angle, especially below a cross-beam or below the chin, the bight of an axe", also "throat, gullet”), from Proto-Germanic *kwerkō (“throat, gullet”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷerh₃- (“to devour; maw”). Cognate with Scots querk (“throat", also "any hollow in the body, such as an armpit, groin, instep, etc.”), Icelandic kverk (“interior angle”). Also partially from dialectal quirk, querk (“a whim, fancy, fuss, huff, complaint", also "to peevishly grumble, grunt, sigh, croak, die”), from Middle English querken, *quirken (“to choke”), from Old Norse kvirkja (“to choke, strangle”), from the same origin above. Related to dialectal querken, quirken (“to choke”). Likely not related to queer.

Irish and Manx surname, Anglicized from Ó Cuirc (“descendant of Corc”), a personal name derived from curc (“tuft of hair”). It was sometimes Anglicized as Oates due to an erroneous association with coirce (“oats”). Sometimes also a shortened variant of McGuirk.

Words formed from quirk

Words that rhyme with quirk

35 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about quirk

What does quirk mean?
Quirk means an idiosyncrasy; a slight glitch, a mannerism; something unusual about the manner or style of something or someone.
What is quirk in Nepali?
Quirk in Nepali is क्विर्क. See Quirk meaning in Nepali.
What part of speech is quirk?
Quirk can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce quirk?
Quirk is pronounced /kwɜːk/ (UK).
What is the plural of quirk?
The plural of quirk is quirks.

Words near quirk in the dictionary

  1. quiritarian
  2. quiritary
  3. quiritation
  4. Quirite
  5. Quirites
  6. quirk
  7. quirk of fate
  8. Quirke
  9. quirked
  10. quirked up
  11. quirkful

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: quirk (page history and authors); Quirk (page history and authors); quirk (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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:

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

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