quicksilver

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“
When the quicksilver is all taken up by the zinc plates, the machine may be run for a while without adding more.

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Definitions (10)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun See mercury.
  2. adjective Unpredictable; mercurial: "a quicksilver character, cool and willful at one moment, utterly fragile the next” (Sven Birkerts).

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (5)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (50)

  • They were as different as stone and quicksilver, and yet the closeness between them was almost visible. —  No One to Trust   Iris Johansen
  • One was his rubbing up pennies with quicksilver, and passing them off for quarters of a dollar on an old man who kept a fruit stall. —  Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
  • They warped and ran with the fluidity of quicksilver, a kaleidoscope revolving around the original. —  FSFMay2005
  • Yours was just like quicksilver, a regular little turk, and mine--Oh, they were like night and day! —  Renée Mauperin
  • Van Helmont also pretended to have once performed with success the process of transmuting quicksilver, and was in consequence invited by the Emperor Rudolph II. —  Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
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Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, from Old English cwicseolfor, living silver (translation of Latin argentum vīvum) : cwic, cwicu, alive; see gwei- in Indo-European roots + seolfor, silver; see silver.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. from Middle English quyksilver, from Anglo-Saxon cwicseolfor (= Dutch kwikzilver = Middle Low German quiksulver = Old High German quecsilabar, quechsilpar, Middle High German quecsilber, German quecksilber = Icelandic kviksilfr, modern kvikasilfr = Swedish qvicksilfver = Norwegian kviksylv, = Danish kviksölv, kvægsolv), literally ‘living silver,’ so called from its mobility, from cwic, living, + seolfor, silver: see quick and silver. So in L., argentum vivum, ‘living silver’; also argentum liquidum, ‘liquid silver,’ Greek ἄργυρος ‘fused silver,’ ὑδράργυρος, ‘water-silver’ (see hydrargyrum).
  2. from quicksilver, n.
 

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/ˈkwɪksɪlvər/
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