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)

(transitive, obsolete) To shake (something); to stir, move. [8th–13th c.]
(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 960102938:
  With a strong yron chaine and coller bound, / That once he could not move, nor quich at all […].
(intransitive) To flinch; shrink.

Etymology 2

From Middle English quicche, from Old English cwiċe m, cwice f. Cognate with Dutch kweek, German Low German Queek, German Quecke.

Alternative forms

quich (obsolete)

Noun

quitch (uncountable)

Elymus repens, couch grass (a species of grass, often considered a weed)
- 1658, Sir Thomas Browne, Urne-Burial, Penguin 2005, p. 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