Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Release or discharge from debt or obligation.
  • noun A document or receipt certifying such release.
  • noun Payment of a debt or obligation.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To repay; make requital or return for.
  • noun Acquittance; discharge from a debt or obligation; a receipt.
  • noun Recompense; requital; return; repayment.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Discharge from a debt or an obligation; acquittance.
  • noun obsolete Recompense; return; repayment.
  • transitive verb obsolete To repay; to requite.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a release or acquittal
  • noun a discharge from a debt or obligation; a document that shows this discharge
  • noun a recompense or reprisal

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a document or receipt certifying release from an obligation or debt
  • noun payment of a debt or obligation

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English quitance, from Old French, from quiter, to free; see quit.]

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Examples

  • Young Marcovich owed Young Dick two dollars, and Young Dick accepted the payment of a dollar and forty cents as full quittance of the debt.

    CHAPTER IV 2010

  • And every hour of love, I have heard him say, pays for itself, on both sides, quittance in full.

    CHAPTER XXVII 2010

  • Garrio and Nasthai exchanged a few words, and likewise some quittance passed from hand to hand, and Garrio said in the High, “Bring your belongings.”

    Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009

  • Garrio and Nasthai exchanged a few words, and likewise some quittance passed from hand to hand, and Garrio said in the High, “Bring your belongings.”

    Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009

  • Garrio and Nasthai exchanged a few words, and likewise some quittance passed from hand to hand, and Garrio said in the High, “Bring your belongings.”

    Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009

  • And will any way when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom

    Archive 2008-11-01 Kiki 2008

  • Accordingly, on the morrow he gave him a thousand dinars and a suit of clothes and a black slave and mounting him on a she-mule, said to him, Allah give thee quittance of responsibility for all this,29 inasmuch as thou art my friend and it behoveth me to deal generously with thee.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • If thou do this, perhaps the device will impose upon the Wazir and the people, and they will believe that thou broughtest her not to the bazar, but for the quittance of thine oath.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • It was impossible for him to leave all these arrears of suffering behind him, and he wished, before entering joyously into the future, to obtain a quittance from the past.

    Les Miserables 2008

  • And will any way when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom

    Afterwards Kiki 2008

Comments

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  • A FIFTH sort (God be with them) they are dead,

    And everyone my quittance under's head:

    To ask them coin, I know they have it not,

    And where nought is, there's nothing to be got,

    I'll never wrong them with invective lines,

    Nor trouble their good heirs, or their assigns.

    - John Taylor, 'A Kicksey Winsey'.

    August 2, 2009