Quaker \Quak"er\, n.

1. One who quakes.

2. One of a religious sect founded by George Fox, of Leicestershire, England, about 1650, -- the members of which call themselves Friends. They were called Quakers, originally, in derision. See Friend, n., 4.

Fox's teaching was primarily a preaching of repentance . . . The trembling among the listening crowd caused or confirmed the name of Quakers given to the body; men and women sometimes fell down and lay struggling as if for life. --Encyc. Brit.

3. (Zo["o]l.)
   (a) The nankeen bird.
   (b) The sooty albatross.
   (c) Any grasshopper or locust of the genus (Edipoda; -- so called from the quaking noise made during flight.

Quaker buttons. (Bot.) See Nux vomica.

Quaker gun, a dummy cannon made of wood or other material; -- so called because the sect of Friends, or Quakers, hold to the doctrine, of nonresistance.

Quaker ladies (Bot.), a low American biennial plant (Houstonia c[ae]rulea), with pretty four-lobed corollas which are pale blue with a yellowish center; -- also called bluets, and little innocents.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)