Meaning

(obsolete) A band of fluted muslin resembling a row of quills..

Definitions by Sense

1. (obsolete) A band of fluted muslin resembling a row of quills.
2. A form of art that involves the creation of decorative designs from thin strips of curled paper.
3. Quillwork.
4. (US and Canada, especially Appalachia and the Prairies) The practice of blowing pepper or snuff through a quill into the nose of a woman who is giving birth, to induce sneezing and diaphragmatic contractions which will induce or hasten labor.
5. present participle and gerund of quill

Example Sentences

In this way, quilling arts were integral to band organization and cooperation, and functioned both within and between households as items of ceremonial exchange (i.e., "crosscutting" private and public domains).

2003, Anita Price Davis, North Carolina During the Great Depression: A Documentary Portrait of a Decade, page 194, To muster the strength for the final push in childbirth, midwives like Granny Lewis of Burlington, North Carolina, quilled the mother-to-be. With quilling the midwife placed the snuff on one end of the straw and blew it into the nostril of the woman at the right time; the great sneeze that resulted from the woman was accompanied by the birth of the child. Granny Lewis and others used quilling well into the 1930s (Kirby, p192).

Childbirth seldom was difficult, but when it was the simple process of "quilling" (which consisted in blowing at just the right time tobacco powder through the quill into the nostril) always brought on a huge sneeze, which immediately delivered the child.

[...] the midwife kept suggesting quilling.

Word Forms

• quillings

Related Words

When Should You Use Quilling?

Use quilling when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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