the.com/quotation

means A word-for-word repetition of something someone else said or wrote, set off and attributed to its source.

from From Latin 'quotare,' meaning to mark a text with numbers or divide it into chapters — itself from 'quot,' meaning 'how many.' Medieval scholars used it to number and cross-reference passages in manuscripts, so a 'quotation' originally meant pointing to where a passage could be found, not the passage itself. Over centuries the sense drifted from locating a passage to actually citing it, and eventually to the words themselves.