/kwɪk/, [kʰw̥ɪk]
OriginFrom Middle English quik, quic (“living, alive, active”), from Old English cwic (“alive”), from Proto-West Germanic *kwiku (“alive, lively quick”), from Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz (“alive, lively, quick”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷih₃wós (“alive”), from *gʷeyh₃- (“to live”), *gʷeyh₃w- (“to live”). For semantic development, compare lively.
Cognate with Dutch kwik, kwiek (“lively, quick”), German keck (“sassy, cheeky”), Danish kvik (“lively, quick-witted, quick”), kvæg (“cattle”), Faroese kvikur (“quick”), Icelandic kvikur (“lively, quick”), Norn kvikk, hwikk (“living, swarming, teeming”), Norwegian kvikk (“quick, lively, quick-witted”), Swedish kvick (“quick, witty”), and also (from Indo-European) with Greek βίος (víos, “life”), Latin vivus (“alive”), Lithuanian gývas (“alive”), Latvian dzīvs (“alive”), Russian живо́й (živój, “alive, lively, quick”), Polish żywy (“alive”), Welsh byw (“alive”), Irish beo (“alive”), biathaigh (“to feed”), Northern Kurdish jîn (“to live”), jiyan (“life”), giyan (“soul”), can (“soul”), Sanskrit जीव (jīva, “alive”), Albanian nxit (“to urge, stimulate”). Doublet of jiva.
- Moving with speed, rapidity or swiftness, or capable of doing so; rapid; fast.
“I ran to the station – but I wasn't quick enough.”
“He's a quick runner.”
“The quickest and nimblest were probably the oxycones, throwing themselves through the water like discuses.”
- Occurring in a short time; happening or done rapidly.
“That was a quick meal.”
“Veronica Ripley, 32, often speaks to friends about the role that video games played in her trans awakening: “I would try to explain it away, saying that I was playing the girl character because she ha”
- Lively, fast-thinking, witty, intelligent.
“You have to be very quick to be able to compete in ad-lib theatrics.”
- Mentally agile, alert, perceptive.
“My father is old but he still has a quick wit.”
- Easily aroused to anger; quick-tempered.
“She has a very quick temper.”
“He is wont to be rather quick of temper when tired.”
“The bishop was somewhat quick with them, and signified that he was much offended.”
- archaicAlive, living.
“I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Ieſus Chriſt, who ſhall iudge the quicke and the dead at his appearing, and his kingdome:”
“Man is no star, but a quick coal / Of mortal fire.”
“The inmost oratory of my soul,
Wherein thou ever dwellest quick or dead,
Is black with grief eternal for thy sake.”
- archaicAt the stage where it can be felt to move in the uterus.
“Whoever does any act under such circumstances that if he thereby caused death he would be guilty of culpable homicide, and does by such act cause the death of a quick unborn child, shall be punished w”
- archaicPregnant, especially at the stage where the foetus's movements can be felt; figuratively, alive with some emotion or feeling.
“she's quick; the child brags in her belly already: tis yours”
“Invention sleeps within a skull
No longer quick with light,
The hive that hummed in every cell
Is now sealed honey-tight.”
“When sentenced she sought to avoid hanging by declaring herself with child – ironically, given her favourite deception – but a ‘jury of Matrons’ found her not quick.”
- archaicFlowing, not stagnant.
- archaicBurning, flammable, fiery.
“And it seemed to me that the dream smote the roof above my bed, and the roof opened and disclosed the outer dark, and in the dark travelled a bearded star, and the night was quick with fiery signs.”
- obsoleteFresh; bracing; sharp; keen.
“[…] the ayre is quicke there, / And it perces and ſharpens the ſtomacke,”
- productive; not "dead" or barren
- Not cryptic.
- Being a distinctively sensitive kind of glaciomarine clay that may behave like a watery fluid under stress.
“Note that quick clay is a subet of brittle material; all quick clay is brittle, but not all brittle clay is quick.) Glaciomarine clay turns into quick clay after extensive pore water leaching by groun”
- Quickly, in a quick manner.
“Get rich quick.”
“Come here, quick!”
“If we consider how very quick the actions of the mind are performed.”
- Answer quickly.
“Quick, how do you spell 'Krabs'?”
- Raw or sensitive flesh, especially that underneath finger and toe nails.
- Plants used in making a quickset hedge
“The works […] are curiously hedged with quick.”
- The life; the mortal point; a vital part; a part susceptible to serious injury or keen feeling.
“This test nippeth, […] this toucheth the quick.”
“How feebly and unlike themselves they reason when they come to the quick of the difference!”
“O see the fate of him whose guard was lowered!—
A single misstep and we leave the quick.”
- archaic, with-definite-articleSynonym of living (“those who are alive”).
- Quitchgrass.
“Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,
Rings Eden thro' the budded quicks”
- A fast bowler.
- transitiveTo amalgamate surfaces prior to gilding or silvering by dipping them into a solution of mercury in nitric acid.
- archaic, poetic, transitiveTo quicken.
“I rose as if quicked by a spur I was bound to obey.”
Formsquicker(comparative) · more quick(comparative) · quickest(superlative) · most quick(superlative) · kwik(alternative, pronunciation-spelling) · quicks(plural) · quicks(present, singular, third-person) · quicking(participle, present) · quicked(participle, past) · quicked(past) · Quicks(plural)