quick

Moving with speed, rapidity or swiftness, or capable of doing so; rapid; fast.

Adjective

  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.
    • The quickest and nimblest were probably the oxycones, throwing themselves through the water like discuses. - 2017, Danna Staaf, Squid Empire, ForeEdge, →ISBN, page 87:
  2. 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 had a smaller hitbox...

    Synonyms: ready

  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. 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. - 1549, Hugh Latimer, The Sixth Sermon Preached Before King Edward, April 6 1549:
  6. Alive, 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: - 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker,...
    • Man is no star, but a quick coal / Of mortal fire. - 1633, George Herbert, The Temple:
    • The inmost oratory of my soul, Wherein thou ever dwellest quick or dead, Is black with grief eternal for thy sake. - 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night, section X:
  7. At 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 with imprisonment...
  8. Pregnant, 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 - c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio),...
    • Invention sleeps within a skull No longer quick with light, The hive that hummed in every cell Is now sealed honey-tight. - 1941, Theodore Roethke, “Death Piece”, in Open House, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf,...
    • 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. - 2012, Jerry White, London in the Eighteenth...
  9. Flowing, not stagnant.
  10. Burning, 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. - 1922, E[ric]...
  11. Fresh; bracing; sharp; keen.
    • […] the ayre is quicke there, / And it perces and ſharpens the ſtomacke, - c. 1607–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, [George Wilkins?], The Late, and Much Admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […],...
  12. productive; not "dead" or barren

Origin

From 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...

Forms

quicker more quick quickest most quick kwik

Synonyms

fast speedy rapid swift brief momentary short-lived bright droll keen intelligent hotheaded rattish short-tempered snippish snippy extant live vital expecting gravid with child running fluent

Antonyms

slow dead

Derived

a quick drop and a sudden stop bisquick double-quick get-rich-quick in quick sticks in quick succession kill-me-quick kiss-me-quick lightning-quick make quick work of olive quick decline syndrome overquick quick access recorder quick-and-dirty quick and dirty quick as a flash quick as a fox quick as a wink quick as lightning quick as thought quick as winking quick bankruptcy quickbeam quickborn

Adverb

  1. Quickly, in a quick manner.
    • Get rich quick.
    • Come here, quick!
    • If we consider how very quick the actions of the mind are performed. - 1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC:
  2. Answer quickly.
    • Quick, how do you spell 'Krabs'? - 2006, SpongeBob SquarePants, Whale of a Birthday:

Forms

quicker quickest kwik

Derived

right quick

Noun

  1. Raw or sensitive flesh, especially that underneath finger and toe nails.
  2. Plants used in making a quickset hedge
    • The works […] are curiously hedged with quick. - 1641, John Evelyn, diary entry September 1641:
  3. The life; the mortal point; a vital part; a part susceptible to serious injury or keen feeling.
    • This test nippeth, […] this toucheth the quick. - 1550, Hugh Latimer, Sermon Preached at Stamford, 9 October 1550:
    • How feebly and unlike themselves they reason when they come to the quick of the difference! - 1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=I to XI):
    • O see the fate of him whose guard was lowered!— A single misstep and we leave the quick. - 1941, Theodore Roethke, “Prognosis”, in Open House, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →OCLC; republished in The Collected...
  4. Synonym of living (“those who are alive”).
    • the quick and the dead

    Synonyms: living

    Antonyms: dead deceased departed

  5. Quitchgrass.
    • Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, Rings Eden thro' the budded quicks - 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto LXXXVIII”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC:
  6. A fast bowler.

Forms

quicks kwik

Derived

cut to the quick to the quick

Verb

  1. To amalgamate surfaces prior to gilding or silvering by dipping them into a solution of mercury in nitric acid.
  2. To quicken.
    • I rose as if quicked by a spur I was bound to obey. - 1917, Thomas Hardy, At the Word ‘Farewell’:

Forms

quicks quicking quicked kwik