4

There is a verb that sounds like kwel/quel that means "to calm". My best attempts to get a butchered spelling close enough that a digital dictionary can tell me the proper spelling are failures; and none of my thesauri have the word of which I'm thinking.

Can anybody help out a frustrated and spelling-challenged English speaker?

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8

You're awfully close. The word is quell.

  1. to thoroughly overwhelm and reduce to submission or passivity <quell a riot>
  2. quiet, pacify <quell fears>
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  • Man! 40 seconds! – Daniel Aug 26 '11 at 20:57
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    How about we both get the same number of votes, and you get accepted for getting there first - sound like a plan? – Daniel Aug 26 '11 at 21:00
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    @Anonymous: You do, but as an unregistered user, you're not allowed to vote. – mmyers Aug 26 '11 at 21:48
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    +1. To both of course ;-) The funniest thing is that quell originally means to kill. – Alain Pannetier Φ Aug 26 '11 at 22:09
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    @drɱ65δ: Cookie! – mmyers Aug 29 '11 at 13:18
6

The word is quell. You'd certainly have found it by googling or dictionary-searching if it weren't for the fact that the acronym QUEL is all that comes up when you try to google "quel" or search a dictionary for it.

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