quadrille

noun

1. A dance originating in the mid-1700s with four couples forming a square, rather much like the modern square dance.

   “There is plenty of company, consisting of young men and women, all very neatly dressed in white and black - a true Portuguese habit. Quadrilles, waltzes, polkas, and mazurkas are danced with great vigour and much skill.”

   “The movements of the other women were more or less similar to Tess's, the whole bevy of them drawing together like dancers in a quadrille at the completion of a sheaf by each, every one placing her sheaf on end against those of the rest, till a shock, or 'stitch' as it was here called, of ten or a dozen was formed.”

2. The music for this dance.

   “There was ol' Mickey Coote Who played hard on his flute When the ladies lined up for a set He was tootin' with skill For each sparkling quadrille Though the dancers were fluther'd and bet”

3. A Spanish trick-taking card game from the 1700s played with a 40-card deck.

   “It now first struck her that she was selected from among her sisters as worthy of being the mistress of Hunsford Parsonage, and of assisting to form a quadrille table at Rosings, in the absence of more eligible visitors.”

4. A choreographed dressage ride, commonly performed to music, with a minimum of four horses.
5. Quadrille ruled graph paper, quad paper.
6. A square tiling of the plane.

verb

1. (intransitive)To dance the quadrille.

   “We quadrilled, waltzed, and conversed, in all of which my clever partner excelled; and her charms, combined with the excellent champagne I imbibed, fairly dazzled my imagination.”

adj

1. (not-comparable)Marked with squares.

   “Penknife, hand-lens, padlock key, marching compass and small cash went in his trouser pockets, leaving the tunic pockets for the little black quadrille notebook, pencil and pen, and the breast pockets for his breviary on one side and cigarettes and matches on the other.”

   “He would write “one paragraph at time”, always beginning each novel in longhand – he favoured notebooks with quadrille lines (those little squares).”