QUELL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does quell mean? 

• QUELL (verb)
  The verb QUELL has 2 senses:

1. suppress or crush completely

2. overcome or allay

  Familiarity information: QUELL used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• QUELL (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they quell    ... he / she / it quells   
Past simple: quelled   
Past participle: quelled   
-ing form: quelling   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Suppress or crush completely

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

quell; quench; squelch

Context example:

quench a rebellion

Hypernyms (to "quell" is one way to...):

conquer; stamp down; subdue; suppress (bring under control by force or authority)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

quelling (forceful prevention; putting down by power or authority)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Overcome or allay

Classified under:

Verbs of eating and drinking

Synonyms:

appease; quell; stay

Context example:

quell my hunger

Hypernyms (to "quell" is one way to...):

conform to; fill; fit; fulfil; fulfill; meet; satisfy (fill, satisfy or meet a want or need or condtion ro restriction)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Something ----s somebody

 Context examples 

It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The latter, however, was not a man to be quelled by words, for he caught up his ell-measure sword-sheath and belabored the cursing clerk with it.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

These civil commotions were constantly fomented by the monarchs of Blefuscu; and when they were quelled, the exiles always fled for refuge to that empire.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Having conquered the violence of his feelings, he appeared to despise himself for being the slave of passion; and quelling the dark tyranny of despair, he led me again to converse concerning myself personally.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

You talked of expected horrors in London—and instead of instantly conceiving, as any rational creature would have done, that such words could relate only to a circulating library, she immediately pictured to herself a mob of three thousand men assembling in St. George's Fields, the Bank attacked, the Tower threatened, the streets of London flowing with blood, a detachment of the Twelfth Light Dragoons (the hopes of the nation) called up from Northampton to quell the insurgents, and the gallant Captain Frederick Tilney, in the moment of charging at the head of his troop, knocked off his horse by a brickbat from an upper window.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

How could you make them look so clear, and yet not at all brilliant? for the planet above quells their rays.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Discipline prevailed: in five minutes the confused throng was resolved into order, and comparative silence quelled the Babel clamour of tongues.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever: his port was still erect, his hair was still raven black; nor were his features altered or sunk: not in one year's space, by any sorrow, could his athletic strength be quelled or his vigorous prime blighted.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

To pass its threshold was to return to stagnation; to cross the silent hall, to ascend the darksome staircase, to seek my own lonely little room, and then to meet tranquil Mrs. Fairfax, and spend the long winter evening with her, and her only, was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk,—to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too still existence; of an existence whose very privileges of security and ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)