Word.ws English Dictionary

making quick work of

making quick work of is the present participle and gerund of make quick work of.

Meaning of make quick work of

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.

Questions about making quick work of

What is making quick work of the present participle and gerund of?
Making quick work of is the present participle and gerund of make quick work of.

Words near making quick work of in the dictionary

  1. making over
  2. making peace
  3. making pigs and whistles of
  4. making pigs and whistles of something
  5. making pretend
  6. making quick work of
  7. making right
  8. making room
  9. making sense
  10. making shift
  11. making shit of

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: making quick work of (page history and authors); 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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Cite this entry: “making quick work of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/making_quick_work_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.