overquick

English

Etymology

From over- +‎ quick.

Adjective

overquick (not comparable)

1. Too quick; overly quick.
   • 1885, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King‎^[1]:

     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.

   • 1899, Anthony Hope, The King's Mirror:

     Then 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.

   • 1900, Thomas Gray, William Mason, Duncan Crookes Tovey, Norton Nicholls, The Letters of Thomas Gray, Including the Correspondence of Gray and Mason‎^[2], G. Bell and Sons, page 166:

     It is really, as Johnson himself saw, an elliptical expression, and was due to an overquick wit, the sire of many an Irish bull.

Derived terms

• overquickly