[en] Certain core-excited quartet levels in alkali-like atoms and ions, termed quasi-metastable, have slow autoionizing rates and comparable (relatively fast for quartets) VUV radiative rates. This circumstance, desirable for laser transitions, is due to angular momentum and parity selection rules on these quarters and the doublets to which they may couple via the spin-orbit interaction. The 109.1-nm transition is between Cs(5p/sup 5/5d6s)/sup 4/P/sub 5/2/ and Cs(5p/sup 6/5d)/sup 2/D and is a prototype of a class of transitions which originate on quasi-metastable levels. It has been observed in emission from a pulsed hollow-cathode discharge. Here the authors report an experiment using the same discharge to populate the lower level of this transition; tunable VUV radiation, generated by four-wave mixing, is used to make absorption measurements at near Doppler-limited resolution. From these data the authors measure accurately the fine-structure splitting of the transition, estimate the oscillator strength and hyperfine splitting, and thus confirm the identity of the transition. The VUV radiation was generated via a resonant process in Zn vapor and then directed through the pulsed hollow cathode. The scanned VUV was absorbed by the excited Cs(5p/sup 6/5d)/sup 2/D atoms in the discharge. The authors measured separately the excited atom populations via absorption on the 5d-nf transitions, thus measuring the NL product of the lower levels. By varying the discharge current, the absorption was measured as a function of the lower level NL yielding curves of growth for these transitions. Careful study of these curves yielded the oscillator strengths of both components of this transition and an estimate of the hyperfine broadening of the upper level. The measured oscillator strengths agreed well with the authors' calculations using the code RCN/RCG