Definition of "quire"

Under the year 1533 we are told that the ream contained twenty quires.

1882, James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, volume 4, page 592

[…] and we must accept the fact that all those good novels, Villette, Emma, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, were written by women without more experience of life than could enter the house of a clergyman; written too in the common sitting-room of that respectable house and by women so poor that they could not afford to buy more than a few quires of paper at a time upon which to write Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre.

1929, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, paperback edition, Penguin Books, page 71

We saw above that the fourth quire consists of ten folios, two of which (folios 29 and 31) Richer added to a quaternion (folios 23 to 28, 30, 32). Most of the folios Richer added to his manuscript supplement, elaborate, or amend text that he had already composed in the codex. In this quire, however, Richer wrote around the added folios as if it was the quire he added to them, not the converse. Indeed, if we were to remove folios 29 and 31, there would be neither grammatical nor narrative continuity between the original folios of the quire which would face each other, that is, between folios 28v[erso] and 30r[ecto] on the one hand, or folios 30v and 32r on the other.

2004, Jason Glenn, Politics and History in the Tenth Century: The Work and World of Richer of Reims, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, page 140

Now, in the first folio volume of 1616, the paging, signatures, and quiring are continuous and regular throughout.

1870, William White, Notes and Queries, volume 42

This is a natural point at which to ask why quiring went out of fashion.

1938, The Dolphin: A Journal of the Making of the Books, number 3

By means of these smooth pages we can mostly see how the modern binder made up the book, but whether in doing this he followed the original quiring is quite another matter.

1976, Alfred William Pollard, Alfred William Pollard: A Selection of his Essays

Madam, myself have lim'd a bush for her,And plac'd a quire of such enticing birds,That she will light to listen to the lays,And never mount to trouble you again.

1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene iii]

Yea, and the prophet of the heav'nly lyre, / Great Solomon sings in the English quire […]

1597–1598, Joseph Hall, Virgidemiarum

Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven / Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: / There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st / But in his motion like an angel sings, / Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; / Such harmony is in immortal souls; / But whilst this muddy vesture of decay / Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, scene i]

I saw the 'potamus take wing / Ascending from the damp savannas, / And quiring angels round him sing / The praise of God, in loud hosannas.

1920, T. S. Eliot, “Hippopotamus”, in Poems

He went on down the hill, toward the dark woods within which the liquid silver voices of the birds called unceasing-the rapid and urgent beating of the urgent and quiring heart of the late spring night.

1938, William Faulkner, Barn Burning