The real meaning of the phrase ‘The Quick and the Dead’.

I always thought the title of this kitschy western about cowboys & girls duels was cool. But I didn't realise it's a word play on the olde English meaning.

I was watching an episode of 'Wolf Hall' on the BBC. A drama about 16th century English king Henry the 8th. In the drama, Thomas Cromwell laments that he has wronged people who are no longer alive. He talks about how you can change the mind of someone who is alive but not someone who is dead. But he uses odd middle English phrasing.

He says, "You can persuade the quick, but how do you remake your reputation with the dead?"

Instead of 'alive' he uses the phrase 'quick'. Which made me think of The Gene Hackman, Russel Crow, Sharon Stone, Leonardo Decaprio movie 'The Quick and the Dead'. A title which obviously refers to those who are a quick draw surviving and those who are not quick being killed.

Upon researching how a phrase 'quick and dead' made it into medieval dialogue, I found that the movie title is actually inspired by the Apostles' Creed used in some Catholic and Protestant church services "He shall come to judge the quick and the dead"

In this case, ‘quick’ is derived from the Olde English ‘cwic’ to mean, ‘alive’ or ‘moving’ or ‘animated’.

So the movie title of ‘The Quick and the Dead’ literally just means ‘The living and the dead’. But of course, it’s also a clever wordplay about quick draw gunfighters.