Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Quaker

Quak′er (kwāk′ẽr), 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. (Zoöl.) (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.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.