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e condition or quality of being quick or living; life. [Obs.] Touch it with thy celestial quickness. Herbert.

The quality of being active; nimbleness; quickness of motion; activity.

Quickness of perception or discernment; penetration of mind; the faculty of nice discrimination. Selden.

y of being agile; the power of moving the limbs quickly and easily; nimbleness; activity; quickness of motion; as, strength and agility of body. They . . . trust to the agility of their wit. Bacon. Wheeling with the agility of a hawk. Sir W. Scott.

Quickness of apprehension; readiness in learning; docility; as, an aptness to learn is more observable in some children than in others.

Full of liveliness and activity; characterized by quickness of motion or action; lively; spirited; quick. Cheerily, boys; be brick awhile. Shak. Brick toil alternating with ready ease. Wordworth.

Liveliness; vigor in action; quickness; gayety; vivacity; effervescence.

Rapidity of motion; quickness; swiftness. Time, with all its celerity, moves slowly to him whose whole employment is to watch its flight. Johnson.

Possessing quickness of intellect, skill, dexterity, talent, or adroitness; expert. Though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two great creative minds. Macaulay. Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever. C. Kingsley.

Quickness of apprehension; active imagination; lively fancy. His wit's as thick as Tewksbury mustard; there's more conceit in him than is in a mallet. Shak.

ning at the same time. There is no difference the concurrent echo and the iterant but the quickness or slowness of the return. Bacon. Changes . . . concurrent with the visual changes in the eye. Tyndall.

A small water bird (Podilymbus podiceps), allied to the grebes, remarkable for its quickness in diving; -- called also dapchick, dobchick, dipchick, didapper, dobber, devil-diver, hell-diver, and pied-billed grebe.

e slowly; to stop for a time; to linger; to tarry. There seem to be certain bounds to the quickness and slowness of the succession of those ideas, . . . beyond which they can neither delay nor hasten. Locke.

Readiness in the use or control of the mental powers; quickness and skill in managing any complicated or difficult affair; adroitness. His wisdom . . . was turned . . . into a dexterity to deliver himself. Bacon. He had conducted his own defense with singular boldness and dexterity. Hallam.

The quality of being expedite; efficient promptness; haste; dispatch; speed; quickness; as to carry the mail with expedition. With winged expedition Swift as the lightning glance.

tfulness; productiveness; fecundity; richness; abundance of resources; fertile invention; quickness; readiness; as, the fertility of soil, or of imagination. "fertility of resource." E. Everett. And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps Corrupting in its own fertility. Shak. Thy very weeds are beautiful; thy waste More r…

In haste; with speed or quickness; speedily; nimbly.

The quality or state of being hasty; haste; precipitation; rashness; quickness of temper.

The quality or power of ready invention; quickness or acuteness in forming new combinations; ingeniousness; skill in devising or combining. All the means which human ingenuity has contrived. Blair.

To do anything with animation and quickness, as to skip, fly, or hop. [Prov. Eng.] Wordsworth.