Meaning

• The lower shaft of a feather, specifically the region lacking barbs.

• A pen made from a feather.

• Any pen.

  "He picked up his quill and wrote a poem."

• A sharply pointed, barbed, and easily detached needle-like structure that grows on the skin of a porcupine or hedgehog as a defense against predators.

• A thin piece of bark, especially of cinnamon or cinchona, curled up into a tube.

• The pen of a squid.

• The plectrum with which musicians strike the strings of certain instruments.

• The tube of a musical instrument.

• Something having the form of a quill, such as the fold or plain of a ruff, or a spindle, or spool, upon which the thread for the woof is wound in a shuttle.

Meaning

• To pierce or be pierced with quills.

• To write.

• To form fabric into small, rounded folds.

• To decorate with quillwork.

• To subject (a woman who is giving birth) to the practice of quilling (blowing pepper into her nose to induce or hasten labor).