Etymologically
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quick

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: /kwɪk/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English quik (“alive, lively”),[2][3] inherited from Old English cwic (“living, alive”), cwicu,[4][2][3] from Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz,[4][5] the source also of Old Saxon quik, Dutch kwik, Old High German quec “lively” (German keck “bold”) and Old Norse kvikr “living”,[4][2] from Proto-Indo-European *gwei- (“to live”),[4][3] the source also of Latin vīvus “alive”, Greek bíos “life”, Lithuanian gývas and Sanskrit jīvá- “living”.[2][5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old English cwic, “alive”, is found about 725 in Beowulf, and earlier in compounds such as cuicbēam, “aspen”, about 700.[2]

Semantic evolution

The original sense, “living, alive”, survives in the quick and the dead, from the Apostles' Creed,[7][4] and in quicksand, so called because it moves as if alive.[7] The sense “lively, active, swift, speedy” developed by about 1300, from the idea of being full of life.[4] Carl Darling Buck noted that quick keeps a notion of “sudden, soon over”, where fast can last: a fast horse but a quick starter.[4] Of persons, “mentally quick, prompt to respond”, is from the late 15th century,[4] and of an action, “done in a short time”, from the 1540s.[4] In Middle English quick also described a woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy, when the child can be felt moving.[4] The tender flesh under a nail, the quick, is from the late 14th century[4] or 1523,[2] and to cut to the quick from the 1520s.[4]

Timeline

  • c. 700 – Old English cuic- in compounds.[2]
  • c. 725 – Old English cwic, alive.[2]
  • c. 1300 – swift, speedy.[4]
  • late 14th century – the tender flesh under a nail.[4]
  • late 15th century – mentally quick.[4]
  • 1520s – cut to the quick.[4]
  • 1540s – done in a short time.[4]

Modern meaning

Adjective

  1. Moving or acting fast; rapid.
  2. Taking little time: a quick look.
  3. Quick to understand or respond; clever.
  4. Easily roused: a quick temper.
  5. (archaic) Alive; living.

Noun

  1. The sensitive flesh under the fingernails or toenails.
  2. The deepest feelings: cut to the quick.
  3. (archaic) The living: the quick and the dead.

Adverb

  1. Quickly.

Word family

  • quickly
  • quickness
  • quicken
  • quicksand
  • quicksilver
  • quickset
  • vivid
  • vital
  • biology
  • zoo

Usage notes

The adverb quick is common in speech, as in come quick, but formal writing requires quickly.[8] An unrelated quick, couch grass, from before 1387, is a northern form of quitch.[9][10]

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  3. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  5. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  7. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  9. ^ Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  10. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press