celerity
/səˈlɛr.ɪ.ti/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.96 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
4
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The speed of an individual wave (as opposed to the speed of groups of waves); often denoted c.
Uncountable
noun
The speed of an individual wave (as opposed to the speed of groups of waves); often denoted c.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "...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,..."
- "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."
- "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."
- "The celerity of executions is a generally neglected issue in the empirical literature on deterrence and capital punishment."
- "As of 2006, celerity has disappeared entirely from the deterrence equation among both high- and low-volume executing jurisdictions."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *kel-der. Latin celer Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-ts Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ts Proto-Italic *-tāts Latin -tās Latin celeritāsder. Old French celeriteeder. English celerity From Old French celeritee (compare French célérité), from Latin celeritas, from celer (“fast, swift”).
Origin
- Source language: Old French
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /səˈlɛr.ɪ.ti/