• (British) IPA: /ˈkwɪkən/

quicken (quickens, present participle quickening; past and past participle quickened)

1. (transitive, now literary) To give life to; to animate, make alive, revive. [from 14^thc.]
   • 1526, William Tyndale, trans. Bible, Gospel of Luke XVII:

     Whosoever will goo about to save his lyfe, shall loose it: And whosoever shall loose his life, shall quycken it.

   • 1610, The Tempest, by Shakespeare, act 3 scene 1

     The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead, / And makes my labours pleasures

   • Like a fruitful garden without an hedge, that quickens the appetite to enjoy so tempting a prize.

2. (intransitive, now literary) To come back to life, receive life. [from 14^thc.]
3. (intransitive) To take on a state of activity or vigour comparable to life; to be roused, excited. [from 15^thc.]
   • 1910, ‘Saki’, "The Lost Sanjak", Reginald in Russia:

     The Chaplain's interest in the story visibly quickened.

4. (intransitive) Of a pregnant woman: to first feel the movements of the foetus, or reach the stage of pregnancy at which this takes place; of a foetus: to begin to move. [from 16^thc.]
   • 2013, Hilary Mantel, ‘Royal Bodies’, London Review of Books, 35.IV:

     Royal pregnancies were not announced in those days; the news generally crept out, and public anticipation was aroused only when the child quickened.

5. (transitive) To make quicker; to hasten, speed up. [from 17^thc.]
   • 2000, George RR Martin, A Storm of Swords, Bantam 2011, p.47:

     That day Arya quickened their pace, keeping the horses to a trot as long as she dared, and sometimes spurring to a gallop when she spied a flat stretch of field before them.

6. (intransitive) To become faster. [from 17^thc.]

   My heartbeat quickened when I heard him approach.

   • 1907, Robert William Chambers, chapter V, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, OCLC 24962326 ↗:

     Breezes blowing from beds of iris quickened her breath with their perfume; she saw the tufted lilacs sway in the wind, and the streamers of mauve-tinted wistaria swinging, all a-glisten with golden bees; she saw a crimson cardinal winging through the foliage, and amorous tanagers flashing like scarlet flames athwart the pines.

7. (shipbuilding) To shorten the radius of (a curve); to make (a curve) sharper.

   to quicken the sheer, that is, to make its curve more pronounced

• Russian: оживи́ть

• Portuguese: agilizar
• Russian: ускоря́ть
• Spanish: agilizar

quicken (plural quickens)

1. (now chiefly, Northern England) The European rowan, Sorbus aucuparia. [from 15th c.]
   • 1924, Ford Madox Ford, Some Do Not…, Penguin 2012 (Parade's End), p, 104:

     Miss Wannop moved off down the path: it was only suited for Indian file, and had on the left hand a ten-foot, untrimmed quicken hedge, the hawthorn blossoms just beginning to blacken […].

• quickbeam