# the quick and the dead

idiom · CEFR C1

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/the-quick-and-the-dead
Updated: 2026-07-29

## Meaning

The living and the dead; everyone, without exception.

## Examples

- The noise was loud enough to wake the quick and the dead.
- The old creed spoke of a judge of the quick and the dead, though few in the congregation still knew that quick meant the living.
- The verdict, when it finally came, was delivered with a gravity that seemed to summon the quick and the dead alike, as though the whole history of the family, present and long buried, had been called to hear it.

## Origin

The phrase comes from the New Testament — Peter in Acts 10:42 and Paul in 2 Timothy 4:1 both describe Christ as the one appointed to judge the quick and the dead — and it was fixed in English by the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. The key word is quick, which here carries its old sense of alive, not fast. The same meaning survives in the quick of a fingernail, the living flesh, and in cut to the quick, to wound at the living core. So the quick and the dead means, plainly, the living and the dead — everyone who is or ever was. Because the archaic sense of quick has otherwise faded, the phrase now sounds solemn and slightly mysterious, and it is often deployed — including as a film title — for exactly that weight, even by people who no longer parse what quick originally meant.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.