Meaning

• To give life to; to animate, make alive, revive.

• To come back to life, receive life.

• To take on a state of activity or vigour comparable to life; to be roused, excited.

• Of a pregnant woman: to first feel the movements of the foetus, or reach the stage of pregnancy at which this takes place; of a foetus: to begin to move.

• To make quicker; to hasten, speed up.

• To become faster.

  "My heartbeat quickened when I heard him approach."

• To shorten the radius of (a curve); to make (a curve) sharper.

  "to quicken the sheer, that is, to make its curve more pronounced"