queach

English

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.) Compare quick.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /kwiːt͡ʃ/
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)
  • Rhymes: -iːtʃ

Noun

queach (plural queaches)

  1. (archaic) A thick, bushy plot; a thicket.
    • 1567, Arthur Golding, Ovid's Metamorphoses: the first booke, lines 137–8:
      Men gan to shroud themselves in house. Their houses were the thickes,
      And bushie queaches, hollow caves, or hardels made of stickes.
    • 1614–1615, Homer, “The Nineteenth Book of Homer’s Odysseys”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., Homer’s Odysses. [], London: [] Rich[ard] Field [and William Jaggard], for Nathaniell Butter, published 1615, →OCLC; republished in The Odysseys of Homer, [], volume II, London: John Russell Smith, [], 1857, →OCLC:
      They found they lodged a boar of bulk extreme,
      In such a queach as never any beam
      The spelling has been modernized.

References