Quarter note

A quarter rest (or crotchet rest) denotes a silence of the same duration as a quarter note or crotchet.

[a][1] The quarter note equates to the semiminima ('half minim') of mensural notation.

The word "crotchet" comes from Old French crochet, meaning 'little hook', diminutive of croc, 'hook', because of the hook used on the note in black notation of the medieval period.

In the Romance languages of Catalan, French, Galician, and Spanish, the name of this note and its equivalent rest is derived from the Latin negra meaning 'black'—as the semiminima was the longest note to be colored in mensural white notation.

The Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Serbian and Slovak names mean "quarter" (for the note) and "quarter's pause" (for the rest).

A quarter note (crotchet) with stem pointing up, a quarter note with stem pointing down, and a quarter rest
Four quarter notes
Whole note Half note Quarter note Eighth note Sixteenth note Thirty-second note
Comparison of duple note values: whole note = 2× half note , etc.