Dictionary

quitch en · VERB · etymology 1

Pronunciation

• /kwɪt͡ʃ/
• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

From Middle English quicchen, quytchen, quecchen, from Old English cweċċan (“to shake, swing, move, vibrate, shake off, give up”). Related to Old English cwacian (“to quake”). More at quake.

Meanings

1. (obsolete, transitive) To shake (something); to stir, move.
2. (UK, intransitive, regional) To stir; to move.
   • With a strong yron chaine and coller bound, / That once he could not move, nor quich at all […]. 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
3. (intransitive) To flinch; shrink.

Forms

quitch en · NOUN · etymology 2

Pronunciation

• /kwɪt͡ʃ/
• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

From Middle English quich, a palatalized 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.

Meanings

1. (uncountable) Elymus repens, couch grass (a species of grass, often considered a weed)
   • 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. 1658, Sir Thomas Browne, Urne-Burial, Penguin, published 2005, page 21:

Forms

Deriveds

quitchgrass (plant) · couch (plant) · quitch grass (plant) · couch-grass (plant)

Synonyms

couch grass · quackgrass