fast
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: enpr: fäst
ipa: /fɑːst/
rhymes: -ɑːst
enpr: făst
ipa: /fæst/
rhymes: -æst
Forms: form: faster
form: fastest
Etymology: From Middle English fast, fest, from Old English fæst (“firm, secure”), from Proto-West Germanic *fast, from Proto-Germanic *fastuz; see it for cognates and further etymology.
The development of “rapid” from an original sense of “secure” apparently happened first in the adverb and then transferred to the adjective; compare hard in expressions like “to run hard”. The original sense of “secure, firm” is now slightly archaic, but retained in the related fasten (“make secure”). Also compare close meaning change from Latin rapiō (“to snatch”) to Latin rapidus (“rapid, quick”), from Irish sciob (“to snatch”) to Irish sciobtha (“quick”).
Senses: examples: text: That rope is dangerously loose. Make it fast!
synonyms: firm
immobile
secure
stable
stuck
tight
antonyms: loose
glosses: Firmly or securely fixed in place; stable.
examples: text: out-lawes […] lurking in woods and fast places
ref: 1596 (date written; published 1633), Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande […], Dublin: […] Societie of Stationers, […], →OCLC; republished as A View of the State of Ireland […] (Ancient Irish Histories), Dublin: […] Society of Stationers, […] Hibernia Press, […] [b]y John Morrison, 1809, →OCLC:
synonyms: fortified
impenetrable
antonyms: penetrable
weak
glosses: Firm against attack; fortified by nature or art; impregnable; strong.
examples: text: I still hear you sayin', "Dear one, hold me fast"
ref: 1933, Will Hudson, Irving Mills, Eddy DeLange, Moonglow:
glosses: Steadfast, with unwavering feeling. (Now mostly in set phrases like fast friend(s).)
raw_tags: of people
examples: text: I am going to buy a fast car.
synonyms: quick
rapid
speedy
glosses: Moving with great speed, or capable of doing so; swift, rapid.
examples: text: Plutonium-240 has a much higher fission cross-section for fast neutrons than for thermal neutrons.
synonyms: quick
rapid
speedy
glosses: Moving with great speed, or capable of doing so; swift, rapid.
Having a kinetic energy between 1 million and 20 million electron volts; often used to describe the energy state of free neutrons at the moment of their release by a nuclear fission or nuclear fusion reaction (i.e., before the neutrons have been slowed down by anything).
qualifier: nuclear physics
raw_tags: of a neutron
examples: text: Sydney is a fast city, and the pace is becoming increasingly more frantic.
ref: 1968, Carl Ruhen, The Key Club, Sydney: Scripts, page 15:
glosses: Of a place, characterised by business, hustle and bustle, etc.
examples: text: a fast racket, or tennis court
text: a fast track
text: a fast billiard table
text: a fast dance floor
glosses: Causing unusual rapidity of play or action.
examples: text: But at the microlevel it consists of an unimaginable number of atoms connected by springy chemical bonds, all jiggling around at a rate that even our fastest supercomputer might envy.
ref: 2007 November 18, Jim Holt, “Mind of a Rock”, in The New York Times:
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: Able to transfer data in a short period of time.
raw_tags: of a piece of hardware
examples: text: Since his majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her nightgown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon’t, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep.
ref: c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:
synonyms: deep
sound
antonyms: light
glosses: Deep or sound (of sleep); fast asleep (of people).
examples: text: All the washing has come out pink. That red tee-shirt was not fast.
text: Mineral pigments were probably the first materials used for dyeing. They were generally not fast to water.
ref: 1979, Kax Wilson, A History of Textiles, Westview Press, →ISBN, page 87:
synonyms: colour-fast
glosses: Not running or fading when subjected to detrimental conditions such as wetness or intense light; permanent.
raw_tags: of dyes or colours
examples: text: Roses, damask and red, are fast flowers of their smells.
ref: 1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Gardens”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC:
glosses: Tenacious; retentive.
examples: text: a fast woman
text: […] we remember once hearing a fast man suggest that they were evidently "nobs who had overdrawn the badger by driving fast cattle, and going it high" — the exact signification of which words we did not understand […]
ref: 1852, John Swaby, Physiology of the Opera, page 74:
text: Had Senator Wilson won the unenviable reputation of being a fast man—a lover of wine, or had he shown himself to the public in a state of inebriety, unable to stand erect in Fanueil Hall for instance, leaning upon the desk to “maintain the center of gravity,” and uttering words that fell sprawling in “muddy obscurity” from lips redolent of rum, rendering it necessary for a prompter and an interpreter to sculpture his speech into symmetry for the public ear and the public press, he would have been pelted from his high office with the indignant ballots of his constituents.
ref: 1867, George W. Bungay, “Temperance and its Champions”, in The Herald of Health and Journal of Physical Culture, volume I, page 277:
text: “I don’t like that young woman,” said Lady Hermione; she’s fast.” “Dear Lady!” “I’ve no doubt you think me old-fashioned. Well, I’m glad I am. I say she’s fast, and what’s more, heartless. I was watching her before supper, and I’m sorry for Tony Lee. She’s been flirting as hard as she can go with Harry Vibart-not to give it a worse name-and she’s got Jim Playfair on a string too. She can’t even leave Frank Bellingham alone, though she’s staying in his house.”
ref: 1933, Dorothy L. Sayers, The Queen’s Square:
text: You're alone with her at last / And you're waiting 'til you think the time is right / Cause you've heard she's pretty fast / And you're hoping that she'll give you some tonight.
ref: 1979, Doug Fieger, Good Girls Don't:
glosses: Having an extravagant lifestyle or immoral habits.
examples: text: […] if she is of the slightly faster kind that gives smart lunch parties at the Strand Corner House, her diet is sometimes a little stronger; she takes to novels of the orchid house and the tiger's lair, to the artless erotics of Miss Elinor Glyn, Mr Hubert Wales, and Miss Victoria Cross.
ref: 1918, Walter Lionel George, A Novelist on Novels:
glosses: Uncharacteristically mature or promiscuous for one's age.
raw_tags: of a girl or young woman
examples: text: There must be something wrong with the hall clock. It is always fast.
synonyms: word: ahead
word: gain
english: as in “the clock is gaining ''x'' minutes per hour/day”
translation: as in “the clock is gaining ''x'' minutes per hour/day”
antonyms: behind
slow
glosses: Ahead of the correct time or schedule.
glosses: More sensitive to light than average.
raw_tags: of photographic film
Synonyms: sense: occurring or happening within a short time
word: quick
sense: occurring or happening within a short time
word: rapid
sense: occurring or happening within a short time
word: speedy
sense: occurring or happening within a short time
word: swift
sense: capable of moving with great speed
word: speedy
sense: rapidly consents to sexual activity
word: easy
word: slutty
word: promiscuous
sense: firmly or securely fixed in place
word: tight
Derived terms: acid-fast
as fast as one's legs could carry one
at a fast clip
bad news travels fast
barefast
bedfast
breastfast
come thick and fast
cragfast
don't drive faster than your guardian angel can fly
earthfast
enfasten
fail fast
fail-fast
fast-acting
fast and furious
fast and loose
fast as lightning
fast backward
fast blue optical transient
fast bowler
fast bowling
fast break
fast breeder
fast-breeder reactor
fast buck
fast busy signal
fast casual
fast company
fastcore
fast crab
fasten
faster than a minnow can swim a dipper
faster than light
faster-than-light
faster than Minute Rice
fast-evolving luminous transient
fast fashion
fast-fashion
fast-flowing
fast follower
fast food
fast-food
fast foodie
fast-foodie
fast food music
fast-forward
fast forward
fast Fourier transform
fastgoing
fast-growing
fastgrowing
fast-handed
fast ice
fastish
fast lane
fast leg theory
fastly
fast-mo
fast mover
fast-moving
fastness
fast-neutron reactor
fast one
fast-paced
fastpack
fast-pitch
fastpitch
fast radio burst
fast reactor
fast rope
fast sheet
fast-tailed
fast-talk
fast-talker
fast tech
fast telegram
fast times
fast-track
fast track
fast travel
fastwalker
fast yellow AB
get nowhere fast
go-fast
go fast
go-fast boat
go-faster stripe
go faster stripes
go nowhere fast
hard-and-fast
hard and fast
headfast
hold fast
holdfast
hyperfast
in the fast lane
lightning fast
lockfast
make fast
makefast
masterfast
move fast and break things
nailfast
nonfast
not so fast
overfast
play fast and loose
pull a fast one
rainfast
semi-fast
semifast
serofast
setfast
shorefast
sitfast
stand fast
steadfast
sternfast
sunfast
superfast
talk fast and loose
thick and fast
think fast
tubfast
tub-fast
ultra-fast fashion
ultrafast
ultra-fast
unfast
washfast
waterfast
wetfast