Homonyms, Etymologically Speaking: Q

Many words have two meanings, sometimes more, which are often very different. Such words have identical spelling and pronunciation, they are known as homonyms. Here I continue an A to Z list of such words and look at how that word came to have two different meanings.

Q is for quarry, which is either a place where something is dug out or the target on a hunt. Considering these two activities would have been among the earliest for mankind, the words describing them are remarkably late. The quarrying of stone would have happened later, but certainly earlier than the first record of the word in the late 14th century. It came from Latin quareia 'place where stones are squared', and is itself from Proto-Indo-European kwetwer 'four' - thus describing the place where stone was cut prior to dressing.

The earlier sense is the hunt, and an Anglo-French word quirreie which referred very specifically to 'the entrails of a deer placed on the hide and offered to the dogs as a reward for their role in the hunt'. Old French coree 'entrails'; Latin corium 'hide'; and Proto-Indo-European kerd 'heart' are all root words.