Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[BMO]

Dear Teachers,

How do you explain that "the quit" means the living?

Thanks.

bmo

[Bob S.]

Do you mean "The Quick and the Dead"?

[BMO]

Yes, it is the quick.

[Bob S.]

Ah, that's more clear.

In a duel (the Old West mostly used guns, at least in the movies), the fastest or quickest person to pull out their gun and shoot the other person was the winner who lived. The slower person got shot. So only the quick would survive.

[BMO]

Yes, it makes sense.

Thanks. a lot.

bmo

[advoca]

It may make sense, but it is not true.

Quick is a very old word and was used in England long before America and the Wild West was even thought of. It means alive; living; animate; -- opposed to dead or inanimate.

In Shakespeare�s Play Hamlet, Hamlet says: 'tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.

But the word is older than that. Chaucer (1340 - 1400) says, �Not fully quyke, ne fully dead they were.� (Not fully quick, nor fully dead)

Quick is an archaic term for life, as in quicksilver, etc.

Many years ago the moment when a baby was first felt to move in its mother�s womb it was considered to have come to life, and this moment was called �quickening.� The significance of the quickening derives from Aristotle and it was the point at which the human life began - when the fetus became animated.

This original meaning of the word �quick� has now died out except in the phrase �the quick and the dead,� kept alive by the King James translation of the Bible, which speaks of Jesus as judge �of quick and dead,� but even more by the continued recitation of the Apostles� Creed, which says of Jesus that �he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.� It was included in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and also appears as a phrase in the Catholic Mass in a prayer about the last judgment when God will come to judge everyone � "both the quick and the dead."

�The quick and the dead� means the living and the dead, not the speedy and the dead.

[Bob S.]

Yes, that's true. I was thinking of the movie. It seems that the movie title is a play on words (my definition) from a much older expression (your definition).
But, yeah, quick refers to life and/or to speed. The verb to quicken means to make more lively. And as a noun, quick can refer to the living tissue under the fingernails or claws. (When trimming my dog's nails, I must be careful not to cut the quick.)

[LucentShade]

"quicken" also refers to the process of coming back to life or reviving, as in the "quickening" process shown in the Highlander movies--the process is related to life, not speed.