make haste









make haste


noun

  1. swiftness of motion; speed; celerity: He performed his task with great haste. They felt the need for haste.
  2. urgent need of quick action; a hurry or rush: to be in haste to get ahead in the world.
  3. unnecessarily quick action; thoughtless, rash, or undue speed: Haste makes waste.

verb (used with or without object), hast·ed, hast·ing.

  1. Archaic. to hasten.

Idioms

  1. make haste, to act or go with speed; hurry: She made haste to tell the president the good news.

noun

  1. speed, esp in an action; swiftness; rapidity
  2. the act of hurrying in a careless or rash manner
  3. a necessity for hurrying; urgency
  4. make haste to hurry; rush

verb

  1. a poetic word for hasten

v.late 13c., from Old French haster (Modern French hâter), from haste (see haste). Now largely superseded by hasten (1560s). n.early 13c., from Old French haste “haste, urgency, hastiness” (12c., Modern French hâte), from Frankish *haifst “violence,” from West Germanic *haifstiz (cf. Gothic haifsts “strife,” Old English hæste “violent, vehement, impetuous”). To make haste is recorded by 1530s. Also, make it snappy. Hurry up, move or act quickly, as in If you don’t make haste we’ll be late, or Make it snappy, kids. The first expression was first recorded in Miles Coverdale’s 1535 translation of the Bible (Psalms 39:13): “Make haste, O Lord, to help me.” The variant dates from the early 1900s and uses snappy in the sense of “resembling a sudden jerk.” The oxymoron make haste slowly, dating from the mid-1700s, is a translation of the Latin festina lente. It is used either ironically, to slow someone down (as in You’ll do better if you make haste slowly), or to comment sarcastically on a lack of progress (as in So far the committee has been making haste slowly). In addition to the idiom beginning with haste

  • haste makes waste
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