Cut to the Quick

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is David. I’m calling from Wales, Massachusetts.

Well, I’ve been reviewing past shows with my sons via podcast, and we came across the episode where you did Cut to the Chase, you know, the cinematic background of that, which led to us to discuss Cut to the Point. And that led me to one of my ones my father used to say quite often was Cut to the Quick.

And you know I can give you a quick example of it. You used to be riding my dirt bike or whatnot in the backyard and you say, boy, if you ran through my freshly greeted seated back lawn, I’d cut you to the quick. And I was just wondering if you could give me some background on that, if that’s some kind of locational dialect because both my parents are from upstate Vermont, and I’ve never actually heard it said anywhere outside of that locale.

Was it always a threat?

Usually it was a threat, or sometimes it was just, you know, a get you to sit down and, you know, pay attention.

Okay. A little bit of like, I don’t know, a slight negative value to it, right?

Yes, yeah. Always with that, yeah. There were consequences if you hadn’t done what he was asking you to do.

Okay.

Right. Dave, it’s not a regional term. It’s much, much older than that. In fact, the roots of this kind of quick go back to Old English. I see it several times in Beowulf. The word is quicku. It means alive in Old English.

And it gave us a lot of words. It gave us the word quicksilver, which is a term for mercury. It looks like it’s a living silver. It gives us the word quicksand, like sand that looks like it’s alive. And you also see it in the phrase the quick and the dead, the people who are alive and the people who are dead.

And those Christopher Lambert movies, the quickening, there can be only one.

Well, yeah.

Highlander film.

Highlander, there we go.

Okay, and quickening during a pregnancy, you know, when the fetus starts to move. All of that is related to this sense of quick.

And so to cut to the quick is to cut to the very core of your being, what makes you actually alive. You can cut a fingernail to the quick because you’re cutting down to the part that’s alive and the fingernail’s not.

I heard it used as a fingernail, but I didn’t really think that it would reference back to just cutting your fingernail too deep.

It’s related.

It’s totally related.

Yeah, it’s totally related.

Yeah, that part’s really alive.

So if your father was going to cut you to the quick, he was going to kill you.

Oh, okay.

Well, obviously he didn’t, although I probably deserved it more than once.

There would be a sword fight.

Or at least cut you to where it really hurt.

Really hurt, yeah.

Yeah, that part that really makes you alive.

So it’s a really old term.

All right.

Well, you answered my question perfectly.

Thank you.

All right, thanks.

Say hello to your son first.

We’re always glad to have the young folks along.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me on.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.