If 'quiveit 'is as fine as eider down, I can imagine the yarn must be expensive and also very warm. I tried to find an image but no wiki nor google.

On the real question; so it is not alive in spoken language; in Am.English anyway.
I learn more about my language here than I do in Holland.
Never knew where it came from till now. And we use it.

online etymology:
1726, from Fr. qui voulez-vous qui vive? sentinel's challenge, "whom do you wish to live," lit. "live who?" In other words, "whose side are you on?"