English

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -aɪə(r)

Etymology 1

Noun

1. A collection of twenty-four sheets of paper of the same size and quality, unfolded or having a single fold; one twentieth of a ream.
2. (bookbinding) A set of leaves which are stitched together. This is most often a single signature, but may be several nested signatures.

Quotations

• Under the year 1533 we are told that the ream contained twenty quires.

• 1929, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, Penguin Books, paperback edition, page 71

  [...] and we must accept the fact that all those good novels, Villette, Emma, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, were written by women without more experience of life than could enter the house of a clergyman; written too in the common sitting-room of that respectable house and by women so poor that they could not afford to buy more than a few quires of paper at a time upon which to write Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre.

Etymology 2

Noun

1. A choir.

Quotations

• c.1590, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, part 2, I.iii http://www.shakespeare-literature.com/Henry_VI,_part_2/3.html

  Madam, myself have limed a bush for her,

  And placed a quire of such enticing birds

Verb

1. italbrac intransitive to sing in concert.

• Quire (architecture), part of a church
• Paper quire, a quantity, usually 24 or 25, of sheets of paper
• a variant spelling of choir
• Quentin Quire, a fictional comic book character
• a holder for arrows (as quiver, archaic)