Quak·er n.
1. One who quakes.
2. One of a religious sect founded by George Fox, of Leicestershire, England, about 1650, -- the members of which call themselves Friends. They were called Quakers, originally, in derision. See Friend, n., 4.
Fox's teaching was primarily a preaching of repentance . . . The trembling among the listening crowd caused or confirmed the name of Quakers given to the body; men and women sometimes fell down and lay struggling as if for life. --Encyc. Brit.
3. Zool. (a) The nankeen bird. (b) The sooty albatross. (c) Any grasshopper or locust of the genus Edipoda; -- so called from the quaking noise made during flight.
Quaker buttons. Bot. See Nux vomica.
Quaker gun, a dummy cannon made of wood or other material; -- so called because the sect of Friends, or Quakers, hold to the doctrine, of nonresistance.
Quaker ladies Bot., a low American biennial plant (Houstonia cærulea), with pretty four-lobed corollas which are pale blue with a yellowish center; -- also called bluets, and little innocents.
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