- the soft, sensitive area under your nails
- She has bitten her nails down to the quick.
Word OriginOld English cwic, cwicu ‘alive, animated, alert’, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch kwiek ‘sprightly’ and German keck ‘saucy’, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin vivus ‘alive’ and Greek bios, zōē ‘life’.
Idioms
See quick in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionarycut somebody to the quick
- to upset somebody very much by doing or saying something unkind
- His accusations cut me to the quick.
Check pronunciation:
quick