quick

With today's word we return to the commonplace. "Quick" refers most often to speed, with an almost frantic connotation not found in "fast" or "speedy." But the word has another meaning that is rather more poetic, namely that of a person's sensitive or vital areas. To be "cut to the quick" is to be critically wounded, either physically or emotionally. My personal favorite of its meanings, however, is its reference to the living; "quick with life" quite aptly draws a contrast between its referent and death's torpor and indifference. The phrase works as well on the emotional and metaphysical levels as it does on the physical; it draws attention to all the gifts the living have that the dead do not, to all kinds of activity, be it corporeal, mental, or perceptual.