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Allin

quitter

nounverbnounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈkwɪ.tə//

Matter flowing from a wound or sore; pus.

noun

  1. 1

    Matter flowing from a wound or sore; pus.

    Therfor Sathan [...] smoot Joob with a ful wickid botche fro the sole of the foot til to his top; which Joob schauyde the quytere with a schelle, and sat in the dunghil.

  2. 2

    obsoleteScoria of tin.

  3. 3

    Variant of quittorAlternative spelling of quittor (“fistulous wound at the top of a horse's foot”).

Etymology

From Middle English quitter, from Anglo-Norman quiture, quyture et al., specialised use of quiture (“burn mark, burning”), from the participle stem of cuire (“to cook”), or from Latin coctura (“cooking”).

verb

  1. 1

    To suppurate; ooze with pus.

noun

  1. 1

    One who quits, as: One who gives in.

    Winners never quit and quitters never win.

    Don't be a quitter — hang in there!

    I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president, I must put the interests of America first.

    Well, they underestimated Hartlepool, and they underestimated me because I am a fighter and not a quitter!

  2. 2

    One who quits, as: One who succeeds in desisting from a vice, especially smoking, drinking, or drugging.

    Quitters are winners! If you can't quit on the first try, hang in there and try to quit again!

  3. 3

    archaicA leaver.

  4. 4

    obsoleteA deliverer.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *kʷyeh₁- Proto-Indo-European *-tis Proto-Indo-European *kʷyéh₁tis Proto-Italic *kʷjētis Latin quiēs Proto-Indo-European *-sḱéti Proto-Italic *-skō Latin -scō Latin quiēscō Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Italic *-tos Latin -tus Medieval Latin quiētusder. Anglo-Norman quitterder. Middle English quiten English quit Proto-Indo-European *-yósder. Proto-Italic *-āzios Latin -āriusnom. Latin -āriusbor. Proto-Germanic *-ārijaz Proto-West Germanic *-ārī Old English -ere Middle English -ere English -er English quitter From quit + -er.

Forms

plural
quitters
past tense
quittered
past participle
quittered
present participle
quittering
third person singular
quitters
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).