Put the Quietus On Someone

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

Hi, I’m doing well. How are you doing? Who are you and where are you calling from?

I’m doing great. My name is Rob and with me is my wife, Andrea. We’re calling from Wilmington, Delaware.

Hey, Rob and Andrea, we’re glad to have you. What’s on your minds today?

A word that comes, we think, maybe from southern West Virginia. We both spent a lot of time there and my wife’s family introduced me to this word.

It’s kwaenus. I have no idea how to spell it. But it’s used in the same sense as kibosh or smackdown.

There’s some bad behavior going on, and we’re going to put the kwaenus on it to shut it down.

Any idea how you might spell that word?

Phonetically, I think. I’m not sure. It was always a spoken word.

My family has lived in Appalachia for multiple generations going back to the 1700s, and I don’t know if it’s something specific to that area or if it was just some colorful word that someone picked up along the line, which is why we’re talking to you guys.

I guess what I would say about this is it’s a remnant of ornate, genteel speech, and it probably is a form of quietus, which is a Latin word, and a form of a slightly longer phrase, quietus est, meaning he is quiet.

And historically, it was a formal declaration to certify that someone had fully settled their debts and that they no longer had an obligation. That meaning expanded to represent the ultimate discharge from life’s burdens.

And it was used that way in Shakespeare and in Hamlet. And so this notion of a final blow, this final settlement involved into the modern sense of shutting down an activity or shutting down a person, which is why I think your comparison to kibosh or a smackdown is exactly right.

That’s great. I’m a bankruptcy lawyer by profession. So I really kind of like the origin of this word.

Do you use any form of quietus?

In about 35 years, I never have, but I’m going to try. And so, yeah, it’s spelled Q-U-I-E-T-U-S.

It’s related to acquiesce and a whole bunch of other words, but the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English defines quietus, which is typically how it’s pronounced in English, although there are other pronunciations, as a hush or state of calm, as in the early morning or after a rain, something that brings calm or death to someone or something, or that causes action to cease, as in phrases put a quietus on or to put the quietus on.

So you will often find it used in fiction where people will talk about there was a quietus in their room after his declaration of love for her or something like that.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Well, thank you. This is very, very enlightening.

Definitely.

Our pleasure.

Yeah, thanks for calling.

But so your version of Aquainis, I haven’t seen it anywhere else, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t get emails and calls with other people who have either that version or other variations on Aquainis or Quietus.

Yeah, that makes sense to me too.

Yeah.

Rob and Andrea, thank you so much for your call.

Thank you.

All right. Take care now.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

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