different between end vs quit

English

Alternative forms

• ende (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English ende, from Old English ende, from Proto-Germanic *andijaz (compare Dutch einde, German Ende, Norwegian ende, Swedish ände), from Proto-Indo-European *h?entíos (compare Old Irish ét (“end, point”), Latin antiae (“forelock”), Albanian anë (“side”), Ancient Greek ?????? (antíos, “opposite”), Sanskrit ?????? (antya, “last”)), from *h?entíos (“front, forehead”). More at and and anti-.

The verb is from Middle English enden, endien, from Old English endian (“to end, to make an end of, complete, finish, abolish, destroy, come to an end, die”), from Proto-Germanic *andij?n? (“to finish, end”), denominative from *andijaz.

Pronunciation

• enPR: ?nd, IPA^(key): /?nd/
• Rhymes: -?nd

Noun

end (plural ends)

1. The terminal point of something in space or time.
   • 1908, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows:

     they followed him... into a sort of a central hall; out of which they could dimly see other long tunnel-like passages branching, passages mysterious and without apparent end.

2. (by extension) The cessation of an effort, activity, state, or motion.

   Is there no end to this madness?

3. (by extension) Death.

   He met a terrible end in the jungle.

   I hope the end comes quickly.

   • c. 1592, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Richard the Third, Act II, scene i:

     Confound your hidden falsehood, and award / Either of you to be the other's end.

   • 1732, Alexander Pope, (epitaph) On Mr. Gay, in Westminster Abbey:

     A safe companion and and easy friend / Unblamed through life, lamented in thy end.

4. The most extreme point of an object, especially one that is longer than it is wide.

   Hold the string at both ends.

   My father always sat at the end of the table.

5. Result.
   • c. 1599, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Act V, scene i:

     O that a man might know / The end of this day's business ere it come!

6. A purpose, goal, or aim.
   • 1675, John Dryden, Aureng-zebe, Act III, scene i:

     But, losing her, the End of Living lose.

   • 1825, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character, Aphorism VI, page 146:

     When every man is his own end, all things will come to a bad end.

   • 1946, Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, I.21:

     There is a long argument to prove that foreign conquest is not the end of the State, showing that many people took the imperialist view.

7. (cricket) One of the two parts of the ground used as a descriptive name for half of the ground.

8. (American football) The position at the end of either the offensive or defensive line, a tight end, a split end, a defensive end.
   • 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Penguin 2000, page 11:

     Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven [...].

9. (curling) A period of play in which each team throws eight rocks, two per player, in alternating fashion.
10. (mathematics) An ideal point of a graph or other complex.
11. That which is left; a remnant; a fragment; a scrap.

    odds and ends

    • c. 1592, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Richard the Third, Act I, scene iii:

      I clothe my naked villainy / With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ, / And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

12. One of the yarns of the worsted warp in a Brussels carpet.
13. (in the plural, slang, African-American Vernacular) Money.

    Don't give them your ends. You jack that shit!

Usage notes

• Adjectives often used with "end": final, ultimate, deep, happy, etc.

Synonyms

• (final point in space or time): conclusion, limit, terminus, termination
• See also Thesaurus:goal

Antonyms

• (final point of something): beginning, start

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Descendants

• ? Japanese: ???

Translations

Verb

end (third-person singular simple present ends, present participle ending, simple past and past participle ended)

1. (intransitive, ergative) to come to an end

2. (transitive) To finish, terminate.

   • And on the seventh day God ended his worke […]

   • c. 1599, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act II, scene iii:

     If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife

   • 1896, A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, XLV, lines 7-8:

     But play the man, stand up and end you, / When your sickness is your soul.

Conjugation

Translations

Derived terms

• ending
• end up
• never-ending
• unending

Anagrams

• DEN, DNE, Den, Den., NDE, NED, Ned, den, edn., ned

Albanian

Etymology 1

From Proto-Albanian *antis/t, from Proto-Indo-European *h?n?t-jes/t (“to plait, weave”).

Verb

end (first-person singular past tense enda, participle endur)

1. (transitive) to weave

   Synonyms: vej, vegjoj

Derived terms

• endem

Etymology 2

Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h?end?-.

Verb

end (first-person singular past tense enda, participle endur)

1. (intransitive) to bloom, blossom
2. (transitive) to flyblow

Derived terms

• endëc

Related terms

• endë

References

Danish

Etymology 1

From Old Norse enn, probably from Proto-Germanic *þan (“then”), like English than, German denn (“than, for”). For the loss of þ-, cf. Old Norse at (“that”) from Proto-Germanic *þat (“that”)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?n/

Conjunction

end

1. than (in comparisons)

Etymology 2

From Old Norse enn, from Proto-Germanic *andi, from Proto-Indo-European *h?entí.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?n/

Adverb

end

1. still (archaic)

2. (with interrogatives) no matter, ever

3. even (in the modern language only in the combination end ikke "not even")

Etymology 3

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??n?/

Verb

end

1. imperative of ende

Dutch

Etymology

From Middle Dutch ende (“end”) with apocope of the final -e.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?nt/
• Hyphenation: end
• Rhymes: -?nt

Noun

end n (plural enden, diminutive endje n)

1. end
2. travel distance
3. a short length of something (such as a stick or a rope)

Synonyms

• einde
• eind

Usage notes

The form end is more informal than both einde and eind and is mainly used colloquially.

Anagrams

• den

Estonian

Pronoun

end

1. partitive singular of ise

Middle English

Etymology 1

From Old English ende.

Noun

end

1. Alternative form of ende

Etymology 2

From Old English endian.

Verb

end

1. Alternative form of enden

Norwegian Bokmål

Verb

end

1. imperative of ende

Norwegian Nynorsk

Verb

end

1. imperative of enda and ende

Vilamovian

Etymology

From Middle High German ende, from Old High German enti.

Pronunciation

Noun

end n

1. end

Antonyms

• ofaong

English

Alternative forms

• quight (obsolete)

Pronunciation

• enPR: kw?t, IPA^(key): /kw?t/, [k?w??t]
• Rhymes: -?t

Etymology 1

From Middle English quiten, quyten, from Anglo-Norman quitter, Old French quitter, from quitte (“acquited, quit”), ultimately from Latin quietus.

Compare Dutch kwijten (“to quit”), German Low German quitten (“to quit”), German quitten, quittieren, Danish kvitte, Swedish qvitta, kvitta (“to quit, leave, set off”), Icelandic kvitta.

Verb

quit (third-person singular simple present quits, present participle quitting, simple past and past participle quit or quitted)

1. (transitive, archaic) To pay (a debt, fine etc.).
   • 1605, William Shakespeare

     Enkindle all the sparks of nature / To quit this horrid act.

   • that judge that quits each soul his hire

2. (transitive, obsolete) To repay (someone) for (something).
   • c. 1515–1516, published 1568, John Skelton, Again?t venemous tongues enpoy?oned with ?claunder and fal?e detractions &c.:

     But if that I knewe what his name hight,
     For clatering of me I would him ?one quight;
     For his fal?e lying, of that I ?pake never,
     I could make him ?hortly repent him forever: […]

3. (transitive, obsolete) To repay, pay back (a good deed, injury etc.).
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.v:

     Vnthankfull wretch (said he) is this the meed, / With which her soueraigne mercy thou doest quight?

   • 1613, John Marston, William Barksted, The Insatiate Countess, III.2:

     Forgive me, Rogero: 'tis my fate / To love thy friend and quit thy love with hate.

4. (reflexive, archaic) To conduct or acquit (oneself); to behave (in a specified way).

   • Be strong and quit yourselves like men, O ye Philistines, that ye be not servants unto the Hebrews, as they have been to you: quit yourselves like men, and fight.
5. (transitive, archaic) To carry through; to go through to the end.
   • 1595-1609, Samuel Daniel, Civil Wars

     Never worthy prince a day did quit / With greater hazard and with more renown.

6. (transitive) To set at rest; to free, as from anything harmful or oppressive; to relieve; to clear; to liberate.
   • 1688, William Wake, Preparation for Death

     To quit you […] of this fear, […] you have already lookt Death in the face; what have you found so terrible in it?

7. (transitive) To release from obligation, accusation, penalty, etc.; to absolve; to acquit.
8. (transitive) To abandon, renounce (a thing).
9. (transitive) To leave (a place).

   • Jones had no sooner quitted the room, than the petty-fogger, in a whispering tone, asked Mrs Whitefield, “If she knew who that fine spark was?”

10. (transitive, intransitive) To resign from (a job, office, position, etc.).

11. (transitive, intransitive) To stop, give up (an activity) (usually + gerund or verbal noun).

12. (transitive, computing) To close (an application).

Adjective

quit (not comparable)

1. (usually followed by of) Released from obligation, penalty, etc; free, clear, or rid.
   • 1990, Claude de Bèze, 1688 revolution in Siam: the memoir of Father de Bèze, s.j, translated by E. W. Hutchinson, University Press, page 153:

     With mounting anger the King denounced the pair, both father and son, and was about to condemn them to death when his strength gave out. Faint and trembling he was unable to walk and the sword fell from his hands as he murmured: 'May the Protector of the Buddhist Faith grant me but seven more days grace of life to be quit of this disloyal couple, father and son'.

Usage notes

• The past tense of quit is now quit for most speakers and writers; dictionaries usually allow quitted as an alternative, but it is rare or nonexistent in North America and Australia, and outnumbered by quit by about 16 to 1 in the British National Corpus. Quitted is more commonly used to mean “left”. e.g., She quitted her job.

Conjugation

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:quit.

Derived terms

• quitter

Translations

References

Pam Peters, The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, Cambridge University Press, p. 453.

Etymology 2

Probably of imitative origin.

Noun

quit (plural quits)

1. Any of numerous species of small passerine birds native to tropical America. [from 19th c.]

Derived terms

• bananaquit
• grassquit
• orangequit

Related terms

• guitguit

Further reading

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.

French

Verb

quit

1. third-person singular past historic of quérir

Latin

Verb

quit

1. third-person singular present active indicative of que?

Old French

Verb

quit

1. first-person singular present indicative of quidier