quick
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "quick", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "quick" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "quick" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
quick is anEnglishadj. It means: Moving with speed, rapidity or swiftness, or capable of doing so; rapid; fast. Pronounced /kwɪk/. It ranks #1,127 in English word frequency. Often confused with quit and quiz.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | quick |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /kwɪk/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,127 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for quick is 5 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kwɪk/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,127 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 14 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for quick, with forms such as "qiuck", "qquick", and "qucik". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "quit", "quiz", "quid", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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 *gʷ… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is quick, spelled Q-U-I-C-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Moving with speed, rapidity or swiftness, or capable of doing so; rapid; fast.
- 2Occurring in a short time; happening or done rapidly.
- 3Lively, fast-thinking, witty, intelligent.
- 4Mentally agile, alert, perceptive.
- 5Easily aroused to anger; quick-tempered.
- 6Alive, living.
- 7At the stage where it can be felt to move in the uterus.
- 8Pregnant, especially at the stage where the foetus's movements can be felt; figuratively, alive with some emotion or feeling.
- 9Flowing, not stagnant.
- 10Burning, flammable, fiery.
- 11Fresh; bracing; sharp; keen.
- 12productive; not "dead" or barren
- 13Not cryptic.
- 14Being a distinctively sensitive kind of glaciomarine clay that may behave like a watery fluid under stress.
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 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 (“alive”), Irish beo (“alive”), biathaigh (“to feed”), Northern Kurdish jîn (“to live”), jiyan (“life”), giyan (“soul”), can (“soul”), Sanskrit जीव (jīva, “alive”), Albanian nxit (“to urge, stimulate”). Doublet of jiva.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: qiuck,qquick,qucik,quicck,quickk,quikc,uqick
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for quick
Misspelling Variants of "quick"
Frequency rank: #1,127 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter Q in our English index: