Wow, we really sped through those synonyms.

They lived a life of abstinence, eating only simple meals of vegetables and never drinking.During Passover, Jewish people abstain from eating anything with leavening in it, such as bread.Unlike fast, which most often describes not eating food, abstain can commonly refer to other activities. (The noun form of abstain is abstinence.) It’s not a perfect synonym in all ways-the verb abstain is typically paired with the preposition from, whereas fast is not. For example, in Islam, the month of Ramadan is a time when people fast during the day.Īs you can tell from these definitions, a common synonym for the verb fast in this sense is abstain. One meaning of fast as a verb is “to abstain from all food.” When used as a noun in this sense, fast means “an abstinence from food, or a limiting of one’s food, especially when voluntary and as a religious observance fasting.” Fasts are a common part of many religious different traditions. So far, we have focused on fast as an adjective and an adverb. Why are there so many Jacks in nursery rhymes, though? Let’s dig a little deeper into this question by reading about it here. That’s right, a nimblewit is “an alert, bright, and clever person.” The word nimble can also be found in the expression nimblewit, an antonym for dumbwit. Iman and Charlotte were able to nimbly evade the conductor who was checking tickets.Fortunately, Lola had nimble fingers and was able to quickly undo the knot.Nimble is an adjective, so you can use it as a synonym for fast as an adjective. Nimble here means “quick and light in movement moving with ease agile active rapid.” It can also mean “quick to understand, think, devise, etc.” This synonym for fast is especially used to describe someone who moves or acts with intelligence and deftness, like an athlete. If you have, you might wonder what nimble means in this context. You may have encountered this nursery rhyme before. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick! Tired of using the same words all the time? Let Grammar Coach™ swiftly swap in the perfect synonym to spice up your writing, for free! Try it out now! Keeping this in mind will be helpful as we look at some of our other synonyms for fast. Elodie knew she wasn’t very swift, but she still hoped that she wouldn’t come in last in the race.That means we need to use swift to replace it.

Here, fast is modifying she, which is a pronoun, so it is an adjective. Elodie knew she wasn’t very fast, but she still hoped that she wouldn’t come in last in the race.Try it yourself! How is fast used in this sentence? Kulthoum had to work swiftly if he was going to leave at 5 o’clock.That makes it an adverb, so we need to use swiftly to replace it: Kulthoum had to work fast if he was going to leave at 5 o’clock.So, how do we know which version of swift to pick? First, we have to identify how fast is being used in the original sentence: (Adding -ly to an adjective is a common way to form an adverb.) Swift is an adjective meaning “moving or capable of moving with great speed or velocity fleet rapid.” While in rare instances, swift can also be an adverb, more typically the adverb form of swift is swiftly.

Let’s take a look at an example with one of our favorite synonyms for fast, swift or swiftly. We’ve lined up some of our favorite synonyms of fast at the starting line, and we are off to the races!īecause fast can be both an adverb and an adjective, the synonyms you choose need to match the part of speech of fast as it is used in context. Now that we’ve quickly given you a speedy history of the word, you might be hankering for terms about speed with a little more oomph than plain ol’ fast. It comes from the Old English fæst, meaning “firm.” By around the 1200s, the word fast extended to include a sense of “running hard,” which gave rise to the word’s meanings of “quickly” and “swiftly.” And, over the next 800 years, we continued to add and subtract meanings from the word fast. Fastly today is considered a nonstandard adverbial form of fast. In fact, because it’s an adjective and an adverb, you don’t have to add -ly to the end to make it an adverb.įun fact: fastly once was the adverb form of fast, dating all the way back to Old English, but the form lost its lexical speed, as it were, a few centuries back. Beyond all the different meanings, fast also functions as many different parts of speech: it can be an adjective, adverb, noun, and even a verb. It has many different meanings, from the one you’re most familiar with (“quick, swift”), to others that you may not even know (“a chain or rope for mooring a vessel”). Have you ever slowed down for a moment, however brief, and given a quick thought to the word fast? It might seem counterintuitive, but hear us out!

Fast synonyms words