quat1 (kwot)

[ pre together, constrain, force, The renowne of her chastitie was such that it almost quatted those sparkes that heated him on to such lawle e affection. Greene, Never too Late (Works, ed. Dyce, Int., p. xxi.). 2t. To oppre ; satiate. Had Philotimus been served in at the first course, when your stomach was not quatted with other daintier fare, his relish had perhaps been something loathsome. Philotimus , 1583. ( Nares .) To the stomack quatted with dainties al delicates see me queasie. Lyly, Euphues, Anat. of Wit, p. 44. quatern.] I. a. 1. Consisting of four; arranged or grouped in fours. Reproductive organs... solitary or quaternary in the same sporangium. Le Maout and Decaisne , Botany (trans.), p. 966. [ cap .] In geol . , noting that part of the geo 2. [ cap.] logical series which is more recent than the Tertiary; Post-tertiary. (See Tertiary.) The oldest and most general division of the Quaternary is into diluvial and alluvial, by which terms are meant respectively coarse detrital material and fine detrital material -the one the result of rapid, the other of slower currents of water. The former presence of ice, both fixed and floating, over a part of the northern hemisphere, and especially in the regions where geology was earliest cultivated, has greatly complicated the question of this division of the Quaternary into subgroups or epochs. Thus diluvial has come to be replaced for the most part by gla cial; and some English geologists divide the Quaternary into glacial and recent, using the term Pleistocene also as the equivalent of glacial. The term recent has also as its synonym both alluvial and human. While the e ential difference between Tertiary and Quaternary is theoretically supposed to be that in the former a portion of the fo il species are extinct, while in the latter all are living, this does not apply in the case of land-animals, especially the mammals. In fact, there is, over extensive areas, great difficulty in deciding the question whether certain formations shall be called Tertiary or Quaternary, as, for instance, in the case of the Pampean deposits, which, although containing great numbers of species of mammals all or nearly all extinct, are generally considered by geologists as being of Quaternary age. 3. In old chem., noting those compounds which contained four elements, as fibrin, gelatin, etc. -4. In math., containing, as a quantic, or homogeneous integral function, four variables. A surface may be called a quaternary locus, because defined by a quaternary equation, or one equating a quaternary quantic to zero. - Quaternary cubic. See cubic.Quaternary number, ten: so called by the Pythagoreans because equal to 1+2+3+4. Pythagoras, in the oath of the brotherhood, was called the revealer of the quaternary number, on account of some secret of arithmetic, po ibly an abacus. - Quaternary quadrics. See quadric. II. n. A group of four things. The objections I made against the quaternary of elements and ternary of principles needed not to be opposed so much against the doctrines themselves. Boyle, Works, I. 586. [ quaternate (kwa-ter'nāt), a. nat us, consists of four leaflets.