means To satisfy a thirst, or to extinguish or suppress something — a fire, a desire, a sound — by cutting it short.

from From Old English 'cwencan,' meaning to put out or extinguish, the causative pair to 'cwincan,' to go out or vanish. The metalworker's sense — plunging hot steel into water to harden it — is a later extension of the same idea: heat, suddenly stilled. A cousin of words across the old Germanic family, though the deeper roots fade into uncertainty.