Quick meaning alive

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sat, Jan 2, 2010 at 3:35 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> IMO, _quickening_ must still be quick (in the archaic sense) for a
> fairly large percentage of speakers, given that there was a movie
> entitled "The Quickening." OTOH, I wouldn't be surprised to discover
> that, for the majority of those who went to see the movie, its title
> had no referent other than as the title of a movie.

When the 1995 Sam Raimi western "The Quick and the Dead" came out, I
don't the moviemakers were counting on audiences knowing about the
Athanasian Creed. In fact, one of the movie's taglines uses the modern
sense of "quick", while another alludes to it:

"Think you're quick enough?"
"In this town, you're either one or the other."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114214/taglines


--Ben Zimmer

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