quadrille

See also: quadrillé

English

Two couples doing a quadrille

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kwɒdˈɹɪl/
• Rhymes: -ɪl

Etymology 1

French, in sense of “group of knights”, from Spanish cuadrilla, diminutive of cuadra (“square”) (compare also cuadra (“four”)), from Latin quadra.

Noun

quadrille (plural quadrilles)

1. (dance) A dance originating in the mid-1700s with four couples forming a square, rather much like the modern square dance.
   • 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume II, London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC:

     The movements of the other women were more or less similar to Tess's, the whole bevy of them drawing together like dancers in a quadrille at the completion of a sheaf by each, every one placing her sheaf on end against those of the rest, till a shock, or 'stitch' as it was here called, of ten or a dozen was formed.

2. (music) The music for this dance.
   • c. 19th century, J. M. Crofts (lyrics and music), “The Irish Rover”:

     There was ol' Mickey Coote
     Who played hard on his flute
     When the ladies lined up for a set
     He was tootin' with skill
     For each sparkling quadrille
     Though the dancers were fluther'd and bet

3. (card games) A Spanish trick-taking card game from the 1700s played with a 40-card deck.
   • 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter 17, in Pride and Prejudice: […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC:

     It now first struck her that she was selected from among her sisters as worthy of being the mistress of Hunsford Parsonage, and of assisting to form a quadrille table at Rosings, in the absence of more eligible visitors.

4. A choreographed dressage ride, commonly performed to music, with a minimum of four horses.

Translations

dance

• Bulgarian: кадрил (bg) m (kadril)
• Catalan: quadrilla (ca) f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 方阵舞

• Czech: čtverylka (cs) f
• Esperanto: kvadrilo
• Estonian: kadrill
• French: quadrille (fr) f
• Georgian: კადრილი (ḳadrili)
• German: Quadrille (de) f
• Greek: καντρίλια (el) f (kantrília), καδρίλια (el) f (kadrília)
• Ido: quadrilo (io)
• Italian: quadriglia f
• Polish: kadryl (pl) m
• Portuguese: quadrilha (pt) f
• Russian: кадри́ль (ru) f (kadrílʹ)
• Spanish: cuadrilla (es) f
• Swedish: kadrilj (sv) c
• Turkish: kadril (tr)

Verb

quadrille (third-person singular simple present quadrilles, present participle quadrilling, simple past and past participle quadrilled)

1. (intransitive) To dance the quadrille.
   • 1834, Arthur Courtenay, Autobiography and Letters of Arthur Courtenay, page 36:

     We quadrilled, waltzed, and conversed, in all of which my clever partner excelled; and her charms, combined with the excellent champagne I imbibed, fairly dazzled my imagination.

Etymology 2

From French quadrillé (“crosshatched”, adjective).

Adjective

quadrille (not comparable)

1. (of paper) Marked with squares.
   • 1961, Robert Francouer, The World of Teilhard, pages 28-29:

     Penknife, hand-lens, padlock key, marching compass and small cash went in his trouser pockets, leaving the tunic pockets for the little black quadrille notebook, pencil and pen, and the breast pockets for his breviary on one side and cigarettes and matches on the other.

   • 2024 May 1, Lisa Allardice, “Brooklyn’s bard: Paul Auster’s tricksy fiction captivated a generation”, in The Guardian‎^[1], →ISSN:

     He would write “one paragraph at time”, always beginning each novel in longhand – he favoured notebooks with quadrille lines (those little squares).

Noun

quadrille (plural quadrilles)

1. Quadrille ruled graph paper, quad paper.

Derived terms

• quadrille paper

Etymology 3

Term used by John Horton Conway.

Noun

quadrille (plural quadrilles)

1. A square tiling of the plane.

Related terms

• quad
• quadrella

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ka.dʁij/

• Audio (Paris)

  (file)

Noun

quadrille m or f (plural quadrilles)

1. (bullfighting) cuadrilla

Verb

quadrille

1. inflection of quadriller:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

Further reading

• “quadrille”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.