quicken

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To make more rapid; accelerate.
2. v. To make alive; vitalize.
3. v. To excite and stimulate; stir: Such stories quicken the imagination.
4. v. To make steeper.
5. v. To become more rapid. See Synonyms at speed.
6. v. To come or return to life: "And the weak spirit quickens” ( T.S. Eliot).
7. v. To reach the stage of pregnancy when the fetus can be felt to move.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To become quick or alive; receive life.
2. To become quick or lively; become more active or sensitive.
3. To enter that state of pregnancy in which the child gives indications of life; begin to manifest signs of life in the womb: said of the mother or the child. The motion of the fetus is first felt by the mother usually about the eighteenth week of pregnancy.
4. To make quick or alive; vivify; revive or resuscitate, as from death or an inanimate state.
5. To revive; cheer; reinvigorate; refresh.
6. To make quick or speedy; hasten; accelerate: as, to quicken motion, speed, or flight.
7. To sharpen; give keener perception to; stimulate; incite: as, to quicken the appetite or taste; to quicken desires.
8. To work with yeast.
9. Synonyms To expedite, hurry, speed.
10. To excite, animate.
11. n. The couch- or quitch-grass, Agropyrum (Triticum) repens. Also quickens.
12. n. Same as quick-beam.
13. In naval architecture, to give a greater curve to.

Wiktionary

1. n. The European rowan tree.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To make alive; to vivify; to revive or resuscitate, as from death or an inanimate state; hence, to excite; to, stimulate; to incite.
2. v. To make lively, active, or sprightly; to impart additional energy to; to stimulate; to make quick or rapid; to hasten; to accelerate
3. v. (Shipbuilding) To shorten the radius of (a curve); to make (a curve) sharper.
4. v. To come to life; to become alive; to become vivified or enlivened; hence, to exhibit signs of life; to move, as the fetus in the womb.
5. v. To move with rapidity or activity; to become accelerated.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. make keen or more acute
2. v. move faster
3. v. show signs of life
4. v. give new life or energy to
5. v. give life or energy to