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Quicksilver

is argenʹtum vivum (living silver) silver that moves about like a living thing. (Anglo-Saxon, cwicseolfor.)

“Swift as quicksilver

It courses through the natural gates

And alleys of the body.”

Shakespeare: Hamlet, i. 5.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.