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quick

Pronunciation: /kwɪk/

The English word “quick” has 20 meanings listed here.

adjective

  1. Moving with speed, rapidity or swiftness, or capable of doing so; rapid; fast.
  2. Occurring in a short time; happening or done rapidly.
  3. Lively, fast-thinking, witty, intelligent.
  4. Mentally agile, alert, perceptive.
  5. Easily aroused to anger; quick-tempered.
  6. Alive, living.
  7. At the stage where it can be felt to move in the uterus.
  8. Pregnant, especially at the stage where the foetus's movements can be felt; figuratively, alive with some emotion or feeling.
  9. Flowing, not stagnant.
  10. Burning, flammable, fiery.
  11. Fresh; bracing; sharp; keen.
  12. productive; not "dead" or barren
  13. Not cryptic.
  14. Being a distinctively sensitive kind of glaciomarine clay that may behave like a watery fluid under stress.

adverb

  1. Quickly, in a quick manner.
  2. Answer quickly.

noun

  1. Raw or sensitive flesh, especially that underneath finger and toe nails.
  2. Plants used in making a quickset hedge
  3. The life; the mortal point; a vital part; a part susceptible to serious injury or keen feeling.
  4. Synonym of living (“those who are alive”).

Etymology

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…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.