Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A disk or counter used in the game of squails.
- noun plural A game in which disks or counters are driven by snapping them from the edge of a round board or table at a mark in the center.
- noun plural Ninepins.
- To throw a stick, loaded stick, disk, fiat stone, or other object at a mark: often applied to the throwing of sticks at cocks or geese on Shrove Tuesday, a sport formerly popular in England.
- To aim at, throw at, or pelt with sticks or other missiles.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb Prov. Eng. To throw sticks at cocks; to throw anything about awkwardly or irregularly.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb intransitive To throw weighted sticks at small animals; to throw anything about awkwardly or irregularly.
Etymologies
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Examples
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These easterly rains, when they do come, which is not often, come wi 'might enough to squail a man into his grave.'
The Hand of Ethelberta Thomas Hardy 1884
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In Pieter Bruegel the Elder's "The Harvesters" 1565, from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, tiny background figures can be seen throwing sticks at a tied-up goose in a game called squail.
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These easterly rains, when they do come, which is not often, come wi’ might enough to squail a man into his grave.’
chained_bear commented on the word squail
Two meanings, as a verb: to make a shrill noise, or to throw a stick or missile at something.
"AAAAAAAAGH!!" she squailed. "You've squaged my pants!" She turned and squailed a squab at the squalid squire.
February 2, 2007
reesetee commented on the word squail
I'll squage myself!
February 2, 2007
oroboros commented on the word squail
"There were buzzards squatting among the old carved wooden corbels and he picked up a stone and squailed it at them but they never moved".
--Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
April 18, 2009
qms commented on the word squail
Consider their lives of travail:
Contentment so brief and so frail,
Of offspring bereft
And little time left,
Should poultry yet suffer a squail?
March 27, 2017