celerity
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /sɪˈlɛɹɪti/
rhymes: -ɛɹɪti
Forms: form: celerities
Etymology: From Old French celeritee (compare French célérité), from Latin celeritas, from celer (“fast, swift”).
Senses: examples: text: O most kind maid, / It was the swift celerity of his death, / Which I did think with slower foot came on, / That brain'd my purpose.
ref: c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, (please specify the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)]:
text: ...when a new medium for attraction was started in the bazaar to which we have alluded, and her letter was dispatched with all possible celerity, insisting that her daughters "should work day and night"—so ran the document—for three weeks,...
ref: 1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XXXV, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 153:
text: The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting on the other side of the deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were casting loose the tackles and bands of the boat which swung there.
ref: 1851, Herman Melville, chapter 48, in Moby-Dick:
ref: 1937, Dorothy L. Sayers, chapter 11, in Busman’s Honeymoon:
text: Warning messages were relayed to the signalmen at Slough East and Dolphin Junction boxes with such celerity that the up main signals were replaced to danger in front of the express before it finally stopped. The signalman at Dolphin Junction just had time to replace the down main signals and pull the emergency lever to lay detonators in front of the fast approaching 7 p.m. Paddington-Reading train.
ref: 1960 March, “Talking of Trains: The Slough Derailment”, in Trains Illustrated, page 132:
text: The celerity of executions is a generally neglected issue in the empirical literature on deterrence and capital punishment.
ref: 1998, Hugo Adam Bedau, The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies:
text: As of 2006, celerity has disappeared entirely from the deterrence equation among both high- and low-volume executing jurisdictions.
ref: 2007, Rudolph Joseph Gerber, John M. Johnson, The Top Ten Death Penalty Myths: The Politics of Crime Control:
text: When Churchill and Roosevelt were considering their declaration of the Atlantic Charter, it was Attlee, acting with a celerity and a clarity of purpose that belied his reputation for caution, who insisted on including “freedom from want” as one of its aims, making economic rights and, with them, a decent life for all, one of the official aims of the war.
ref: 2018 January 2, Adam Gopnik, “Never Mind Churchill, Clement Attlee Is a Model for These Times”, in The New Yorker:
glosses: Speed, swiftness.
topics: climatology
geography
meteorology
natural-sciences
oceanography
glosses: The speed of an individual wave (as opposed to the speed of groups of waves); often denoted c.
topics: climatology
geography
hydrology
meteorology
natural-sciences
oceanography
glosses: The speed of an individual wave (as opposed to the speed of groups of waves); often denoted c.
The speed with which a perturbation to the flow propagates through the flow domain.
examples: text: Celerity of dispatching the Chappe telegraph [section title]
ref: 1867, Taliaferro Preston Shaffner, The Telegraph Manual:
text: ...and many endeavours have been made, not only to transmit signals with celerity, but also to transmit more than one communication at the same time along the same wire.
ref: 1885, The Wonders of the Universe, Cassell Publishing Company:
topics: communications
electrical-engineering
engineering
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
telecommunications
glosses: The speed of symbol transmission, now called baud rate.
Related terms: accelerate
celeripede
decelerate