MEANING
1. To become faster, or to make a movement, process, or rhythm faster.
2. To become or make more alive, active, or keenly felt.
3. To reach the stage of pregnancy when fetal movement is first felt.
Use it for
describing a pulse accelerating; showing someone increasing their pace; making a change in rhythm perceptible without naming an emotionMoves between an accelerating pulse and an awakening feeling without confusing speed, renewed life, and the historical pregnancy sense. Writing functions: Movement / Awakening.
Words that belong together
- quicken one’s pace
- a pulse quickens
- quicken the rhythm
On the page
Her pulse quickened before she recognized the voice.
He quickened his pace when the footsteps behind him stopped.
The familiar cadence quickened a hope she had tried to dismiss.
Beneath the warming soil, the seeds began to quicken.
The diary says that the child quickened that spring, meaning that movement was first felt.
Word forms
- Base
- quicken
- Past tense
- quickened
- Past participle
- quickened
- Present participle
- quickening
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- quicken
- Present continuous
- am/is/are quickening
- Present perfect
- have/has quickened
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been quickening
- Past
- quickened
- Past continuous
- was/were quickening
- Past perfect
- had quickened
- Past perfect continuous
- had been quickening
- Future
- will quicken
- Future continuous
- will be quickening
- Future perfect
- will have quickened
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been quickening
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
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Usage notes
Transitive or intransitive: quickens, quickened, quickened, quickening; future will quicken. No invented irregular past. The pregnancy sense is intransitive and historical or medical. Register: literary. Commonness: moderately common for pace; less common in other senses (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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