Word Direct Answers

What does "quicken" mean?

Quicken: To make lively, active, or sprightly; to impart additional energy to; to stimulate; to make quick or rapid; to hasten; to accelerate; as, to quicken one's steps or thoughts; to quicken one's departure or speed.

Additional senses

  1. 2.(Shipbuilding) To shorten the radius of (a curve); to make (a curve) sharper; as, to quicken the sheer, that is, to make its curve more pronounced.
  2. 3.To come to life; to become alive; to become vivified or enlivened; hence, to exhibit signs of life; to move, as the fetus in the womb. The heart is the first part that quickens, and the last that dies. Ray. And keener lightnings quicken in her eye. Pope. When the pale and bloodless east began To quicken to the sun. Tennyson.
  3. 4.To move with rapidity or activity; to become accelerated; as, his pulse quickened.

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