英语词汇cut to the quick的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

cut to the quick. The quick in this sense is the most sensitive or tender flesh in the body, such as the flesh under the finger- nails. The word derives from the Anglo-Saxon cwicu, “alive or living,” as do the adverb and adjective quick. Cut to the quick means to cut through the skin to sensitive, tender living tissue and, figuratively, to hurt someone deeply. It has been used both ways (by Shakespeare, Dryden, Swift, Defoe) since the early 16th century, sometimes in the form of galled, touched, or stung to the quick. Other instances of quick used in the sense of “liv- ing” are the biblical phrase the quick and the dead (“the living and the dead”), the phrase quick with child (“pregnant with liv- ing child”), and quicksilver.

词汇	cut to the quick
词源	cut to the quick. The quick in this sense is the most sensitive or tender flesh in the body, such as the flesh under the finger- nails. The word derives from the Anglo-Saxon cwicu, “alive or living,” as do the adverb and adjective quick. Cut to the quick means to cut through the skin to sensitive, tender living tissue and, figuratively, to hurt someone deeply. It has been used both ways (by Shakespeare, Dryden, Swift, Defoe) since the early 16th century, sometimes in the form of galled, touched, or stung to the quick. Other instances of quick used in the sense of “liv- ing” are the biblical phrase the quick and the dead (“the living and the dead”), the phrase quick with child (“pregnant with liv- ing child”), and quicksilver.
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