‘Quick’ Didn’t Always Mean ‘Fast’. Here’s Its Surprising Original Meaning

So many traces of its original meaning are still hiding in plain sight.

Culture & Parenting Reporter, HuffPost

“Quick” is a word people say all the time as a synonym for fast. But most probably don’t realise that the word used to mean something very different.

Like “nice” and “awful” (which used to mean “ignorant” and “worthy of awe”, respectively), the word quick has travelled some distance from its original meaning. But it does manage to hold onto a little bit of the old and new at the same time.

“Quick originally meant alive, not fast,” Sophie Vignoles, a linguist and head of learning content at the language learning app Babbel, told HuffPost.

“It comes from the Old English ‘cwic.’ That older meaning survives in the phrase ‘the quick and the dead,’ which means ‘the living and the dead.’”

Indeed, earlier translations of the Bible and the Nicene Creed include “the quick,” and even some versions of the creed used to this day include the line “he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead.” There are also multiple Westerns with the title “The Quick and the Dead,” drawing from those Christian origins.

Farm animals also used to be........

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