Quartern
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A quarter part; one fourth. archaic
"In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top."
- 2 one of four equal parts wordnet
- 3 A loaf of bread weighing about four pounds. archaic
"...I find that you, in recording the longevity of incumbents ([[https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044005279021] 1ˢᵗ S. xi. 407.]) notice that the quartern loaf was on the 5th March, 1801, at the enormous price of twenty-two pence halfpenny, happily at this moment only two-fifths of that amount..."
Example
More examples"In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top."
Etymology
From Middle English quartern, quarteroun, quartroun, from Anglo-Norman quatroun (“quarter of a hundred”), from Old French quarter (“fourth”).
More for "quartern"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.