APAD: Cut to the quick.

Meaning: To cause deep emotional hurt.

 

Background: An archaic meaning of 'quick' is those that are living (thus

biblical references to 'the quick and the dead'). It has its roots in the Old

English word cwic, meaning living.

 

Modern usage of "to cut to the quick" is usually in references to causing a deep

emotional hurt, such as he was cut to the quick by her sharp comments. It can

also be used as an expression meaning to cut through the inconsequential and get

to the facts.

 

Usage of quick in this context lives on in reference to the tender flesh below

fingernails and toenails - if you cut a nail too low and expose this you have

cut it to the quick. Quickening is also used to describe the moment when a

mother first feels her baby moving in the womb.

 

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I first saw this meaning of quick three years ago in Pavel Tsatsouline's "The

Quick and The Dead," a book on strength training. This is just another old short

English word that Churchill and Orwell would love and the GRE and TOEFL would

ignore and of which I, a good exam-taker, came to the west, oblivious.

 

Google translator lists one entry: 活人. Not bad, but it sounds comic. I

wonder what the English-Chinese dictionaries say about the word.