quitch

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kwɪt͡ʃ/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪtʃ

Etymology 1

From Middle English quicchen, quytchen, quecchen, from Old English cweċċan (“to shake, swing, move, vibrate, shake off, give up”), from Proto-West Germanic *kwakkjan, from Proto-Germanic *kwakjaną (“to shake, swing”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷog- (“to shake, swing”). Related to Old English cwacian (“to quake”). More at quake.

Alternative forms

• quich, queach, queatch, quinch, quetch, queck

Verb

quitch (third-person singular simple present quitches, present participle quitching, simple past and past participle quitched)

1. (transitive, obsolete) To shake (something); to stir, move. [8th–13th c.]
2. (intransitive, now UK, regional) To stir; to move. [from 13th c.]
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     With a strong yron chaine and coller bound, / That once he could not move, nor quich at all […].

3. (intransitive) To flinch; shrink.

Etymology 2

From Middle English quich, a palatised variant of quike, quyke, from Old English cwice, from Proto-West Germanic *kwikwā, from Proto-Germanic *kwikwǭ. Cognate with Dutch kweek, German Low German Queek, German Quecke.

Alternative forms

• quich (obsolete)

Noun

quitch (uncountable)

1. Elymus repens, couch grass (a species of grass, often considered a weed)

   Synonyms: couch grass, quackgrass

   • 1658, Sir Thomas Browne, Urne-Burial, Penguin, published 2005, page 21:

     we found the bones and ashes half mortered unto the sand and sides of the Urne; and some long roots of Quich, or Dogs-grass wreathed about the bones.

Derived terms

• (plant): couch, couch-grass

Translations

couch grass — see couch grass