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Reader question: Please explain “cut her to the quick” in this sentence: The disloyalty of some of her fans – with their taunts and jeers – cut her to the quick. My comments: Their taunts and jeers hit her really hard, in other words. Her fans used to be nice, it seems. This sort of disloyal behavior never happened before and so it hurts her really bad. Quick, you see, is slang for the flesh under our fingernails. The nail, as we know, is hardened and rough, hence insensible. In contrast, the flesh underneath the nail is so tender and sensitive that if the nail is pierced, it leads to extreme excruciating pain. Have you heard of the expression the quick and the dead, meaning all people, both the living and the dead? Well, in “cutting to the quick”, the quick refers to the living, sensitive part (while the nail represents part that’s dead or numb). Anyways, if you’ve ever cut your fingernail while chopping carrots in the kitchen, which I’m sorry to say I actually did, you’ll know exactly what it feels to be cut to the quick. Don’t try it. All right. Well, metaphorically speaking, when the fans demonstrate their disapproval with taunts and jeers, or sneers and insults and the like, their disloyalty gives the artist tremendous pain emotionally. And the pain is similar to being cut through one’s nail. In similar expressions, we also sometimes hear people say, to use the cutting knife again, such and such an event cuts them to the bone, i.e. very deeply or it cuts them to the core, or the innermost part of their being, their heart and soul. | 
