Are these two words interchangeable in most usages?
My specific example is:
It smells bad in this [quarter/quadrant] of the building this morning.
Could both words be used correctly in this sentence; would they have the same meaning?
Add a comment
|
6 Answers
Quadrant is more specific than quarter as a word. A quarter is 25% of anything, whereas quadrant specifically refers to area. So if you're looking to indicate that exactly 25% of the building is stinky, either word would work.
However while both words are semantically correct in your statement, in terms of common usage they're also both a little odd in the sentence you've used them in. Section, part, area or wing would all be much more common terms for building description.
-
3And usually, either a circle, or a quadrant of something where the axes are significant. Commented Jul 13, 2012 at 12:57
-
That's a good point. I didn't want to say circles specifically (because you can have quadrants of a square - see Gartner's Magic Quadrant) but including the axis definitely fits the bill. Commented Jul 13, 2012 at 13:17
-
"Each of four parts of a plane, sphere, space, or body divided by two lines or planes at right angles." Commented Jul 13, 2012 at 14:52
-
Well, okay. I hereby modifying my references to "circles": we do routinely talk about the "quadrants of a plane". Tolerance72 is right: it's about areas divided by two axes, not necessarily circles.– JayCommented Jul 13, 2012 at 16:38
I can't think of a place where I would use quarter to describe a building.
I would use quadrant to refer to a section of a building, but only when the building has four distinct sections. For example there is a large shopping centre near me that has four coloured sections, I might call them the "red quadrant", "blue quadrant" etc.
I can imagine the word quadrant being used in place of the word sector in laboratories or research facilities but certainly not quarter
answered Jul 13, 2012 at 12:21
A "quarter" is 1/4 of anything. A "quadrant" is 1/4 of a circle, specifically one of the 4 "pie slices" you get by drawing a line that goes through the center of the circle and then another line at right angles to this first line. "Quadrant" is much more specific than "quarter".
You would not normally say "this quadrant of the building ..." Well, not unless the building was shaped like a circle and you indeed wanted to refer to one of the four quadrants.
You would only say "this quarter of the building ..." if you wished to express the idea that 1/4 of the buiding was affected, as opposed to 1/3 or 1/5 or some other fraction.
Several other posters have mentioned that "quarters" can also refer to living space, as in, "the servants' quarters of the mansion", usually used when describing a group residence, like a military barracks or servants' rooms. That's a different definition of the word, but perhaps influenced your question.
The two words 'quarter' and 'quadrant' are not interchangeable in most instances.
If you are thinking of 'part of a general area' (with only a passing connotation of one fourth of the general area), they are both for geographical areas rather than structures (like a building). In that sense they are synonyms (but obviously not when 'quarter' refers to the American coin and 'quadrant' refers to a navigation device).
'Quarter' refers informally to a part of a general area, like a district of a city (where 'quarter is any number of districts of the city not limited to 4).
'Quadrant' is a more technical term referring to the areas of a map which can be split into 4 parts, NW, NE, SE, and SW.
Also, 'quarter' is much more common than 'quadrant'.
-
Quarter as a general area is also tied to the idea of residence or housing (i.e. Officer's Quarters, or the 3rd Amendment of the US Constitution). Commented Jul 13, 2012 at 13:25
-
@Marcus_33: yes, one would certainly not use 'Officer's quadrants' to refer to their sleeping arrangements. BUt I was trying to restrict the answer to the situations where 'quarter' and 'quadrant' are mostly synonymous (a specific area).– MitchCommented Jul 13, 2012 at 14:00
-
So you're saying that if the building is known for being divided in 4 equal parts (like NW, NE, SE, SW), then it would make sense to hear "quadrant"? That is my case.– xdumaineCommented Jul 13, 2012 at 14:08
-
You asked in the title of the question about 'quarter' and 'quadrant' so I responded to that. As to 'building' in general, it would seem strange to use either. If in the strange circumstance where you have a building as you describe, both would be technically accurate and 'quadrant' might be used by say firefighters or SWAT teams (but quarter would not), but I would think they would still use 'the NE part / section of the building'.– MitchCommented Jul 13, 2012 at 14:15
-
@roviuser No. I have never heard someone talk about "quadrants" of a building. "Quadrant" refers to circles, not areas in general.– JayCommented Jul 13, 2012 at 16:36
I can’t imagine any native speaker saying quadrant of the building. The only architectural use I know of for quadrant is in describing a street curved in a quarter-circle. Even quarter of the building seems unlikely, quarter being used for part of an open area, such as a town. The normal thing to say would be this part of the building.
answered Jul 13, 2012 at 12:14
-
Imaging it's an engineering company, and the building is divided equally in 4 parts (like a Cartesian plane). Then can you imagine someone saying "quadrant of the building"?– xdumaineCommented Jul 13, 2012 at 14:06
-
-
Well maybe that's a difference between British and American English. That word/phrase is not uncommon for me or my coworkers.– xdumaineCommented Jul 13, 2012 at 14:33
-
1@roviuser: Then that must be the answer to your question. Commented Jul 13, 2012 at 14:55
-
It may be that architects or fire fighters or some other profession do indeed divide buildings into four parts and refer to them as quadrants. I certainly can't swear that there is NO profession that uses this as a technical or specialized term. But I don't find such a definition in my dictionary, and it is certainly not common English in America.– JayCommented Jul 16, 2012 at 14:02
I could be wrong about this but I always envisioned a quadrant to be a sector of a coordinate space/plane, not necessarily a circle. If you think of the directions on a compass as a coordinate plane rather than a circle, then this understanding of quadrant makes sense. The four sectors of our Milky Way are quadrants. However, looking at some definitions, quadrant clearly has some meanings closely related to circles that I was unaware of.
-
Draw a circle with its center at the origin of the Cartesian plane, and the "circle definition" and the "plane definition" come together.– JayCommented Jul 16, 2012 at 14:03