[Short for next.]
1. A discharge or acquittance given on payment of sums due, or clearing of accounts; a receipt.
1540. Act 32 Hen. VIII. (Pardon), Such issues fines or amerciaments … and haue his or their Quietus for the same.
1623. Webster, Duch. Malfi, III. ii. You had the tricke in Audit time to be sicke, Till I had sign’d your Quietus.
1688. Evelyn, Diary, 15 March. I gave in my account about the Sick and Wounded, in order to have my quietus.
1780. Burke, Sp. Econ. Reform, Wks. 1826, III. 297. A final acquittance, (or a quietus, as they term it) is scarcely ever to be obtained [from the exchequer].
1887. 48th Dep. Keeper’s Rep., 628. The several Books … being preserved, and … the satisfaction or quietus being therein entered.
† 2. A discharge from office or duty. Obs.
c. 1670. Wood, Life, an. 1650–1, 16 Jan. (O. H. S.), I. 166. Had A. W. continued postmaster a little longer, he had, without doubt, received his quietus.
1687. Luttrell, Brief Rel. (1857), I. 401. Sir Francis Withens, a judge of the Kings bench, hath his quietus.
a. 1711. Ken, Hymnotheo, Poet. Wks. 1721, III. 155. The Guardian to relieve, Who his Quietus shall in Heav’n receive.
1788. Walpole, Letters (1902), 104. A Veteran Author ought to take out his quietus as much as the Superannuated of any other Profession.
3. Discharge or release from life; death, or that which brings death.
1602. Shaks., Ham., III. i. 75. When he himselfe might his quietus make With a bare bodkin.
1768–74. Tucker, Lt. Nat. (1834), II. 639. Some obtain their quietus without any signs of pain at all.
1775. Sheridan, Rivals, V. iii. If an unlucky bullet should carry a quietus with it.
a. 1839. Praed, Poems (1864), II. 65. Since Laura and his stars were cruel, Sought his quietus in a duel.
1872. Baker, Nile Tribut., v. 65. This shot, far from producing a quietus, gave rise to a series of extraordinary convulsive struggles.
b. Final settlement or extinction.
1806–7. J. Beresford, Miseries Hum. Life (ed. 5), I. 233. We have now, I think, given a quietus to the parlour.
1885. Clodd, Myths & Dr., I. iv. 73. This law gave the quietus to theories of common origin.
4. (By assoc. with quiet.) Something that quiets or represses.
1824. Miss Ferrier, Inher., xxxii. This disaster … had the effect of a quietus upon Miss P. for some time.
1855. Thackeray, Newcomes, II. 304. The nurse ran to give its accustomed quietus to the little screaming infant.
Hence † Quietus v. trans., to discharge. Obs.
1688. in Ellis, Corr., II. 22. The other Powell and Holloway, who are quietus’d.
