Also quipo, quippu, -o. [Quichuan quipu knot.] A device of the ancient Peruvians and others for recording events, keeping accounts, sending messages, etc., consisting of cords or threads of various colors, knotted in various ways.
1704. trans. Ovalle’s Kingd. Chile, in Churchill’s Voy., III. 74. They have their quipoes, which is a sort of strings of different bigness in which they make knots of several colours, by which they remember…. When they go to confession these quipoes serve them to remember their sins.
1777. Robertson, Hist. Amer., II. VII. 304. The quipos seem to have been a device for rendering calculation more expeditious and accurate.
1853. Th. Ross, trans. Humboldt’s Trav., III. xxvi. 88. These quipos or knotted cords are found in Canada, in Mexico, in Peru, in the plains of Guiana, in Central Asia, in China, and in India.
1870. Lubbock, Orig. Civilis., ii. (1875), 43. Even the Peruvians had no better means of recording events than the Quippu or Quipu.
attrib. 1830. Carlyle, Misc. (1857), II. 168. History has been written with quipo-threads, with feather pictures, with wampum-belts. Ibid. (1845), Cromwell (1871), I. Introd. 4. Monumental stoneheaps and Quipo thrums to keep record by.
b. transf. and fig.
1781. Mrs. Delany’s Corr., Ser. II. II. 64. I believe you would contrive to knot them some quipos of kind remembrance.
1885. Mrs. Lynn Linton, Christ. Kirkland, III. iii. 83. Marian Evans, whose first knot in the quipos of her fame was made by this work.
