Promptorium Parvulorum (Harl. 221) 470 Sprete or qvante, contus.

1606 W. Burton tr. Erasmus Seven Dialogues ii. sig. G4^v Bidding her farewell, wee thrust her off with a quant, that shee might be free from the shippe.

1687 T. Shadwell tr. Juvenal Tenth Satyr 38 Contus signifies a Quant or Sprett, with which they shove Boats.

1847 J. O. Halliwell Dict. Archaic & Provinc. Words II Quant,..a pole used by..bargemen..for pushing on their craft in adverse or scanty winds.

1883 G. C. Davies Norfolk Broads iv. 25 When the wind fails, the men betake themselves to the ‘quant’, which is a long slender pole with a knob at one end and a spike and shoulder at the other.

1893 H. M. Doughty Our Wherry in Wendish Lands 167 To get all sail off her, and undertake a tough job with the quants.

1902 Working Men's Coll. Jrnl. 7 367 The tide was running down..and the quant had to be used a good deal, the yacht sticking ‘on the putty’ more than once.

1935 Times 12 Aug. 13/5 The [Norfolk] marshman knows precisely where to place his quant when manoeuvring his punt out of the narrowest winding ‘deek’.

2006 Toronto Star (Nexis) 8 June l1 None of the Hunter's fleet of 13 yachts and six half-deckers has an engine, so passengers can either wait, row or push along the bottom using a quant, a heavy pole about six metres long.

1924 Trans. Newcomen Soc. 3 42 All the framing and gearing of these mills are of wood, the only important parts of iron being the wrought iron gudgeons upon which the shafts revolve, and perhaps the ‘quants’ or spindles which drove the runner stones.

1945 Archit. Rev. 98 78/1 When the stones are overdriven the nuts are mounted on vertical spindles or ‘quants’ which drive the ‘runner stones’ from above.

1991 D. R. Koontz Cold Fire ii. iii. 266 He tried to explain how the mill had functioned, talking about the spurwheel and the quant, the mace and the rynd.

1898 H. M. Smyth Five Years Siam I. viii. 161 The antics of a boat working her way up-stream..caught and held by the quant poles for a moment at the upper edge of rocks.

1901 Academy 26 Oct. 389/1 There..lay a large family-boat immovable... A quant-pole stood rigidly upright beside it.

1974 Oxf. Junior Encycl. (rev. ed.) IX. 389/1 On the Norfolk Broads,..boatmen often propel their ‘wherries’ (sailing barges) for short distances by ‘quanting’ with very long, heavy poles called ‘quant-poles’.

1918 London, Edinb. & Dublin Philos. Mag. 6th Ser. 35 294 Sommerfeld gave a generalization of the quant-conditions which proved to be of very great importance.

1926 Nature 18 Dec. 874/1 It would seem inappropriate to speak of one of these hypothetical entities as..a corpuscle of light, a light quantum or a light quant.

1932 Stiles & Walsh tr. Castelfranchi Rec. Adv. Atomic Physics II. v. 167 The light energy..always remains concentrated in the form of ‘light quants’, or grains.

2002 Internat. Jrnl. Aromatherapy 12 143/1 Dissolved oxygen in water reacts under UV-light energy with water molecules to form hydrogen peroxide. With additional light-quants, this peroxide decomposes.

1879 President's Rep. to Board of Regents (Univ. Michigan) 59 Subjects... III. Organic Chemistry... IV. Quant. Analysis.

1925 Chem. Abstr. 19 3094 The surface activity of the urine not only deviates from its normal value in the quant. sense, but..it suffers qual. changes.

2002 Campaign (Nexis) 18 Oct. 24 We have econometric models, qual and quant research, database mining..and inventory systems.

1896 W. C. Gore Student Slang in F. N. Scott Contrib. Rhet. Theory 7 Quant, quantitative analysis, or quantitative chemistry.

1954 Sci. Monthly Oct. 260/2 The magnificent structure of chemistry rests securely upon the foundation of quantitative analytic fact... The reason we teach ‘quant.’ is that it is useful.

1981 Washington Post (Nexis) 4 Sept. c1 ‘I couldn't pass my quantitative analysis test. I got a C-minus.’ ‘Anybody who gets a C in quant..is doing okay.’

1979 Forbes 16 Apr. 120/2 Russell isn't a ‘quant’, one of the young consultants who do much of their monitoring by questionnaire and most of their evaluating by quantitative analysis.

1989 Computers in Banking (Nexis) July 26 Quants, usually trained in mathematics, physics, or engineering disciplines, are being increasingly hired by Wall Street firms as analysts.

1993 Harper's Mag. Oct. 64 A group of ‘policy wonks’ and quants disdainful of the sticky dilemmas inherent in moral reasoning.

2000 S. Hörter in L. Schuster Shareholder Value Managem. Banks ii. 31 The top management of financial firms has to be able to interpret figures... Otherwise, power will informally shift to ‘quants’ and risk managers.

1988 Pensions & Investm. Age 13 June 34/3 We were very impressed with the quant fund... We saw a very distinct strategy.

2006 Buffalo (N.Y.) News (Nexis) 22 May c4 Since running a computer is cheaper than paying a team of researchers, quant funds should have lower expenses than their actively managed peers.

1985 Business Week (Nexis) 30 Dec. 150 Chamberlin and Stanley Levine, the brokerage's vice-president,..have spent a good part of their careers as ‘quant jocks’, relying on computers to outsmart the Wall Street herd.

2000 New Scientist 30 Sept. 56/1 Bankers have such a high regard for mathematical modelling and forecasting that they call people employed to do it ‘rocket scientists’ and ‘quant jocks’.

1870 H. Stevenson Birds of Norfolk II. 213 On the 29th of May, 1868, as a marshman was ‘quanting’ his boat over Hickling broad, he was suddenly attracted by the peculiar notes of a couple of red-legs.

1883 G. C. Davies Norfolk Broads v. 37 The water was too deep for us to quant our punt.

1887 W. Rye Month on Norfolk Broads p. ii Great disinclinations to quant or scull.

1932 Open Air Year (Times Publishing Co.) 138 The marshmen..are a continual delight to the eye, whether rowing or sailing, punting or ‘quanting’ their boats.

1968 D. D. Gladwin & J. M. White Encycl. Canals ii. ii. 35 These bridges were often omitted, the unfortunate horse being trained to jump on the boat..being quanted across by the boatman.

2004 Independent on Sunday (Nexis) 14 Nov. (Features) 18 For 37 years, Edwards has quanted his punt along its narrow channels and river cuts, working the reed beds.

1893 Toynbee Rec. 90 Now her stern, now a broadside, is toward us..as she quants against the breeze.