quiver

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A container for arrows, crossbow bolts or darts, such as those fired from a bow, crossbow or blowgun.

   Don Pedro: Nay, if Cupid have not spent all his quiver in Venice, thou wilt quake for this shortly.

2. 2
   noun

   A ready storage location for figurative tools or weapons.

   He's got lots of sales pitches in his quiver.

3. 3
   adj

   Nimble, active.

   [...] there was a little quiver fellow, and 'a would manage you his piece thus; and 'a would about and about, and come you in and come you in.

4. 4
   verb

   To shake or move with slight and tremulous motion.

   The birds chaunt melodie on euerie buſh, The ſnakes^([sic – meaning ſnake]) lies rolled in the chearefull ſunne, The greene leaues quiuer with the cooling winde, And make a checkerd ſhadow on the ground: [...]

5. 5
   noun

   the act of vibrating

6. 6
   noun

   case for holding arrows

7. 7
   noun

   an almost pleasurable sensation of fright

8. 8
   noun

   a shaky motion

Etymology

From Middle English quiver, from Anglo-Norman quivre, from Old Dutch cocare (source of Dutch koker, and cognate to Old English cocer (“quiver, case”)), from Proto-West Germanic *kokar (“container”), said to be from Hunnic, possibly from Proto-Mongolic *kökexür (“leather vessel for liquids”); see there for more. Replaced early modern cocker, the inherited reflex of that West Germanic word. The mathematical sense originated as German Köcher in a 1972 paper by Pierre Gabriel; it was likely chosen because a quiver contains arrows, while a digraph contains directed edges (also called "arrows").