Word.ws English Dictionary

quoil

quoil is the archaic form of coil.

Meaning of coil

Noun (1)

coil (plural coils)

  1. Something wound in the form of a helix or spiral.
    • the sinuous coils of a snake
  2. (colloquial) Any intrauterine device for contraception (originally coil-shaped).
    • ‘I’m gonna go on the pill and get fitted for a coil. I don’t wanna be pregnant. Ever. Again!’2020, Paul Mendez, Rainbow Milk, Dialogue Books (2021), page 293
  3. A coil of electrically conductive wire through which electricity can flow.
    Synonyms:
    inductor
  4. A cylinder of clay.
  5. (figuratively) Entanglement; perplexity.
    • What trifling coil do we mortals keep;
      Wake, eat, and drink, evacuate, and sleep.a. 1722, Matthew Prior, “Human Life”, in H. Bunker Wright, Monroe K. Spears, editors, The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, Second edition, volume I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, published 1971, page 687

Noun (2)

coil (plural coils)

  1. (now obsolete except in phrases) A noise, tumult, bustle, or turmoil.
    • a. 1738, Thomas Urquhart, Peter Anthony Motteux, and John Ozell (translators), François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
      And when he saw that all the dogs were flocking about her, yarring at the retardment of their access to her, and every way keeping such a coil with her as they are wont to do...

See all 13 meanings of coil

Forms of quoil

pluralquoils

Questions about quoil

What is quoil the archaic form of?
Quoil is the archaic form of coil.

Words near quoil in the dictionary

  1. quoife
  2. quoifed
  3. quoiffure
  4. quoifs
  5. quoigenic
  6. quoil
  7. quoilers
  8. quoils
  9. quoin
  10. quoin post
  11. quoin posts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: quoil (page history and authors); coil (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: “quoil.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/quoil. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.