Word.ws English Dictionary

make quick work of

make quick work of verb: to accomplish a specified task easily and quickly.

Verb

make quick work of (third-person singular simple present makes quick work of, present participle making quick work of, simple past and past participle made quick work of)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To accomplish a specified task easily and quickly.
    • The cupbearers made quick work of the after-dinner cleanup chores.
  2. (idiomatic, transitive) To kill a specified person easily and quickly.
    • The spiders made quick work of the human soldiers.

Synonyms of make quick work of

Forms of make quick work of

third-person singular presentmakes quick work of
present participlemaking quick work of
past participlemade quick work of
pastmade quick work of

Questions about make quick work of

What does make quick work of mean?
Make quick work of means to accomplish a specified task easily and quickly.
What part of speech is make quick work of?
Make quick work of is a verb.
What is the past tense of make quick work of?
The past tense of make quick work of is made quick work of.

Words near make quick work of in the dictionary

  1. make over
  2. make peace
  3. make pigs and whistles of
  4. make position
  5. make pretend
  6. make quick work of
  7. make right
  8. make room
  9. make sail
  10. make semblant
  11. make sense

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: make quick work of (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-make quick work of.ogg.

Cite this entry: “make quick work of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/make_quick_work_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.