quick

From Middle English quik, quic, from Old English cwic (“alive”), from Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *gʷih₃wós (“alive”), from *gʷeyh₃- (“to live”), *gʷeih₃w- (“to live”). Cognate with Dutch kwik, kwiek, German keck, Swedish kvick; and (from Indo-European) with Ancient Greek βίος (bíos, “life”), Latin vivus, Lithuanian gývas (“alive”), Latvian dzīvs (“alive”), Russian живо́й (živój), Welsh byw (“alive”), Irish beo (“alive”), biathaigh (“feed”), Kurdish jîn (“to live”), jiyan (“life”), giyan (“soul”), can (“soul”), Sanskrit जीव (jīva, “living”).

• IPA^(key): /kwɪk/

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• Rhymes: -ɪk

quick (comparative quicker, superlative quickest)

1. 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.

2. Occurring in a short time; happening or done rapidly.

   That was a quick meal.

3. Lively, fast-thinking, witty, intelligent.

   You have to be very quick to be able to compete in ad-lib theatrics.

4. Mentally agile, alert, perceptive.

   My father is old but he still has a quick wit.

5. Of temper: easily aroused to anger; quick-tempered.
   • Latimer

     The bishop was somewhat quick with them, and signified that he was much offended.

6. (archaic) Alive, living.
   • Bible, 2 Timothy iv. 1

     the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead

   • Herbert

     Man is no star, but a quick coal / Of mortal fire.

   • 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night, X

     The inmost oratory of my soul,

     Wherein thou ever dwellest quick or dead,

     Is black with grief eternal for thy sake.

7. (archaic) Pregnant, especially at the stage where the foetus's movements can be felt; figuratively, alive with some emotion or feeling.
   • Shakespeare

     she's quick; the child brags in her belly already: tis yours

8. Of water: flowing.
9. Burning, flammable, fiery.
10. Fresh; bracing; sharp; keen.
    • Shakespeare

      The air is quick there, / And it pierces and sharpens the stomach.

11. (mining, of a vein of ore) productive; not "dead" or barren

• (moving with speed): fast, speedy, rapid, swift
• See also Thesaurus:speedy

• (moving with speed): slow

quick (comparative quicker, superlative quickest)

1. Quickly.
2. (colloquial) With speed.

   Get rich quick.

   Come here, quick!

   • John Locke

     If we consider how very quick the actions of the mind are performed.

• right quick

quick (plural quicks)

1. Raw or sensitive flesh, especially that underneath finger and toe nails.
2. Plants used in making a quickset hedge
   • Evelyn

     The works […] are curiously hedged with quick.

3. The life; the mortal point; a vital part; a part susceptible to serious injury or keen feeling.
   • Latimer

     This test nippeth, […] this toucheth the quick.

   • Fuller

     How feebly and unlike themselves they reason when they come to the quick of the difference!

4. Quitchgrass.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Tennyson to this entry?)

5. (cricket) A fast bowler.

quick (third-person singular simple present quicks, present participle quicking, simple past and past participle quicked)

1. (transitive) To amalgamate surfaces prior to gilding or silvering by dipping them into a solution of mercury in nitric acid.
2. (transitive, archaic, poetic) To quicken.
   • Thomas Hardy

     I rose as if quicked by a spur I was bound to obey.

• quick in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• quick in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• quick at OneLook Dictionary Search

From English.

• IPA^(key): /kwik/
• Rhymes: -ik

quick m (plural quicks)

1. quick waltz

• slow

Borrowed from Middle Low German quick, from Old Saxon quik, from Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz. Also a Central Franconian form; compare early modern German quick (Cologne, 15th century). Doublet of keck, which see for more.

• IPA^(key): /kvɪk/, [kʋɪk]

• Audio

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quick (comparative quicker, superlative am quicksten)

1. (rather rare, dated) lively

• Much more common than the simplex is the pleonastic compound quicklebendig.