quilt

From Middle English quilte, quylte, from Anglo-Norman quilte and Old French coilte, cuilte (compare French couette), from Latin culcita. Doublet of quoit.

• IPA^(key): /kwɪlt/, [kʰw̥ɪlt]

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• Rhymes: -ɪlt

quilt (plural quilts)

1. A bed covering consisting of two layers of fabric stitched together, with insulation between, often having a decorative design.

   My grandmother is going to sew a quilt.

2. A roll of material with sound-absorbing properties, used in soundproofing.
3. A quilted skirt worn by women.
4. (figurative) Something composed of a variety of stitched-together parts; a patchwork.
   • 1983 April 9, Walta Borawski, “Midler in Boston”, in Gay Community News, page 12:

     Her humor was as bawdy as ever, and evenly placed throughout. Early on […] she alternated alternated jokes and stanzas, providing a wonderful quilt of her musical and story-telling talents.

quilt (third-person singular simple present quilts, present participle quilting, simple past and past participle quilted)

1. To construct a quilt.
2. To construct something, such as clothing, using the same technique.
   • 1648, Robert Herrick, “Corinna’s Going a Maying”, in Hesperides, or The VVorks both Humane & Divine, London: Printed for John Williams, and Francis Eglesfield, […], →OCLC; republished in The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick, London: William Pickering, […], 1825, →OCLC, pages 91–92:

     Get up, get up for shame, the blooming morne / Upon her wings presents the god unshorne. / See how Aurora throwes her faire / Fresh-quilted colours through the aire; / Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see / The dew bespangling herbe and tree.

   • 1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “Of the Inhabitants of Lilliput; […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part I (A Voyage to Lilliput), pages 107–108:

     Two hundred Sempſtreſſes were employed to make me Shirts, and Linen for Bed and Table, all of the ſtrongeft and coarſeſt kind they could get; which, however, they were forced to quilt together in ſeveral Folds, for the thickeſt was ſome degrees finer than Lawn.

3. (UK, slang, obsolete) To beat or thrash.
   • 1884, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, The Clockmaker, page 113:

     I am glad, said Mr. Slick, that cussed critter, that schoolmaster, hasn't yet woke up. I'm most afeerd if he had aturned out afore we started, I should have quilted him, for that talk of his last night sticks in my crop considerable hard.

• batting
• pinking shears
• sew
• cotton

quilt

1. Alternative form of quilte

quilt m (definite singular quilten, indefinite plural quiltar, definite plural quiltane)

1. Alternative spelling of kvilt