APAD: Cut to the quick.
Meaning: To cause deep emotional hurt.
Background: An archaic meaning of 'quick' is those that are living (thus
biblical references to 'the quick and the dead'). It has its roots in the Old
English word cwic, meaning living.
Modern usage of "to cut to the quick" is usually in references to causing a deep
emotional hurt, such as he was cut to the quick by her sharp comments. It can
also be used as an expression meaning to cut through the inconsequential and get
to the facts.
Usage of quick in this context lives on in reference to the tender flesh below
fingernails and toenails - if you cut a nail too low and expose this you have
cut it to the quick. Quickening is also used to describe the moment when a
mother first feels her baby moving in the womb.
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I first saw this meaning of quick three years ago in Pavel Tsatsouline's "The
Quick and The Dead," a book on strength training. This is just another old short
English word that Churchill and Orwell would love and the GRE and TOEFL would
ignore and of which I, a good exam-taker, came to the west, oblivious.
Google translator lists one entry: 活人. Not bad, but it sounds comic. I
wonder what the English-Chinese dictionaries say about the word.