quirk

American  

[kwurk] / kwɜrk /

noun

1. a peculiarity of action, behavior, or personality; mannerism.

   He is full of strange quirks.

2. a shift, subterfuge, or evasion; quibble.

3. a sudden twist or turn.

   He lost his money by a quirk of fate.

4. a flourish or showy stroke, as in writing.

5. Architecture.

   1. an acute angle or channel, as one dividing two parts of a molding or one dividing a flush bead from the adjoining surfaces.

   2. an area taken from a larger area, as a room or a plot of ground.

   3. an enclosure for this area.

6. Obsolete. a clever or witty remark; quip.

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adjective

1. formed with a quirk or channel, as a molding.

quirk British  

/ kwɜːk /

noun

1. an individual peculiarity of character; mannerism or foible

2. an unexpected twist or turn

   a quirk of fate

3. a continuous groove in an architectural moulding

4. a flourish, as in handwriting

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Related Words

See eccentricity.

Other Word Forms

• quirkily adverb
• quirkiness noun
• quirky adjective

Etymology

Origin of quirk

First recorded in 1540–50; origin uncertain

Example Sentences

During testing, I ran into another maddening keyboard quirk, where I tapped the right letters but iOS spit out the wrong ones.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 29, 2026

One quirk of dragon fruit farming is that its flowers only bloom at night and into the early hours of the morning.

From BBC • Mar. 26, 2026

Every character has an adorable quirk or two, or at minimum owns a dorky T-shirt with a periodic table joke or a cartoon cat.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 18, 2026

In a quirk, U.S. exports of gold more than doubled last year to $84 billion.

From MarketWatch • Feb. 19, 2026

She sighed and shook her head as if this were just some strange Dari quirk.

From "The Science of Breakable Things" by Tae Keller

Related Words

• aberration
• characteristic
• eccentricity
• foible
• habit
• idiosyncrasy
• kink
• mannerism
• peculiarity
• trait
• twist
• vagary