Meanings
- not comparableToo quick; overly quick.
It is really, as Johnson himself saw, an elliptical expression, and was due to an overquick wit, the sire of many an Irish bull.
1900, Thomas Gray, William Mason, Duncan Crookes Tovey, Norton Nicholls, The Letters of Thomas Gray, Including the Correspondence of Gray and Mason, G. Bell and Sons, page 1662 more examples
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.
1885, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the KingThen 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.
1899, Anthony Hope, The King's Mirror
Origin
Cite this entry
overquick. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/overquick
“overquick.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/overquick. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “overquick,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/overquick.
Source: overquick on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.