English

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Etymology

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From over- +‎ quick.

Adjective

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overquick (not comparable)

  1. Too quick; overly quick.
    • 1885, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King[1]:
      And Merlin answered, 'Overquick art thou / To catch a loathly plume fallen from the wing / Of that foul bird of rapine whose whole prey / Is man's good name: he never wronged his bride.
    • 1899, Anthony Hope, The King's Mirror:
      Then I slipped away and paid marked and honorific courtesy to Bederhof's wife and Bederhof's daughters, tall girls, not over-quick to be married, somehow quite inevitable if one considered Bederhof himself.
    • 1900, Thomas Gray, William Mason, Duncan Crookes Tovey, Norton Nicholls, The Letters of Thomas Gray, Including the Correspondence of Gray and Mason[2], G. Bell and Sons, page 166:
      It is really, as Johnson himself saw, an elliptical expression, and was due to an overquick wit, the sire of many an Irish bull.

Derived terms

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