Word.ws English Dictionary

quoth

UK/kwəʊθ//kwoʊθ/

quoth verb: said.

Verb (1)

quoth

  1. (archaic, defective, literary) Said.
    • Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore! / Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."1845 February, — Quarles [pseudonym; Edgar Allan Poe], “The Raven”, in The American Review, volume I, number II, New York, N.Y.; London: Wiley & Putnam, […], →OCLC
    • “Pull, if ye never pull’d before; / Good ringers, pull your best,” quoth he.a. 1897, Jean Ingelow, The Brides of Enderby

Verb (2)

quoth (third-person singular simple present quoths, present participle quothing, simple past and past participle quothed)

  1. (archaic, auxiliary, defective, modal, nonstandard) To say.
    • But the Healing-one stood before the under-king, and the under-king arraigned him, quothing, thou art the king of the Jews? the Healing-one quoths him, thou quoths.1807, Samuel Henshall, The Gothic Gospel of Saint Matthew, from the Codex Argenteus of the Fourth Century; with the Corresponding English, or Saxon, from the Durham Book of the Eighth Century, in...
    • The owner had the power of transmitting the possession to an heir by bequest, by quothing or speaking forth the name of the intended successor to the lord.1864, Francis Palgrave, “The Conqueror, from Hastings to the Coronation. 1066.”, in The History of Normandy and of England, volumes III (Richard Sans-Peur—Richard Le-Bon—Richard III.—Robert...

Examples of quoth in a sentence

  • “Good morrow to thee, jolly fellow,” quoth Robin, “thou seemest happy this merry morn.” ¶ “Ay, that am I,” quoth the jolly Butcher, “and why should I not be so?1883, Howard Pyle, chapter V, in The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood […], New York, N.Y.: […] Charles Scribner’s Sons […], →OCLC:
  • The old cow laughs, for she feels sure of a square dear now; and the wise riven quoths; quoths he: “Tis well done, let the good work go on,”[…]1909, Dairy Foods Review, page 13:
  • “’Ods blood!” quoths Lee, “’Tis ‘Honey Dew.’”1916, The Pottery & Glass Salesman, page 21, column 3:
  • “Sooth,” quoths the Invincible Vince de la Crau, “this great Wind is within me and is clearly meant as a sign of my approaching Folly.[…]”1962, The Paris Review, page 43:

Forms of quoth

third-person singular presentquoths
present participlequothing
past participlequothed
pastquothed

Origin of quoth

From Middle English quoth, quath, from Old English cwæþ (first and third person past indicative of cweþan (“to say, speak to, address, exhort, admonish”)), from Proto-Germanic *kwaþ (first and third person past indicative of Proto-Germanic *kweþaną (“to say”)). Unrelated to quote.

Words formed from quoth

Words that rhyme with quoth

1 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about quoth

What does quoth mean?
Quoth means said.
How do you use quoth in a sentence?
“Good morrow to thee, jolly fellow,” quoth Robin, “thou seemest happy this merry morn.” ¶ “Ay, that am I,” quoth the jolly Butcher, “and why should I not be so?
What part of speech is quoth?
Quoth is a verb.
How do you pronounce quoth?
Quoth is pronounced /kwəʊθ/ (UK).
What is the past tense of quoth?
The past tense of quoth is quothed.

Words near quoth in the dictionary

  1. quoters
  2. quotes
  3. quotest
  4. quoteth
  5. quoteworthy
  6. quoth
  7. quotha
  8. quothed
  9. quothing
  10. Quothquan
  11. quoths

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: quoth (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-quoth.ogg.

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