quadrille
noun
- a dance for four or more couples, popular in the 19th century and consisting of five sections in either 2/4 or 6/8
- a four-handed variant of ombre popular especially in the 18th century
- music for the quadrille dance
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /kwɒdˈɹɪl/
adj
Etymology: From French quadrillé (“crosshatched”, adjective).
- Marked with squares.
“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.”
“He would write “one paragraph at time”, always beginning each novel in longhand – he favoured notebooks with quadrille lines (those little squares).”
noun
Etymology: Term used by John Horton Conway.
- A square tiling of the plane.
verb
Etymology: French, in sense of “group of knights”, from Spanish cuadrilla, diminutive of cuadra (“square”) (compare also cuadra (“four”)), from Latin quadra.
- To dance the quadrille.
“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.”