fast

fast, rapid, swift, fleet, quick, speedy, hasty, expeditious mean moving, proceeding, or acting with great celerity. Fast and rapid are often used without distinction; but fast frequently applies to the moving object and emphasizes the way in which it covers ground, whereas rapid is apt to characterize the movement itself and often to suggest its astonishing rate of speed

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a fast horse

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a fast train

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a fast boat

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a rapid current

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a rapid gait

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rapid progress

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a fast worker

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rapid work

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Swift suggests great rapidity, frequently coupled with ease or facility of movement

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fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things— Shak.

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more swift than swallow shears the liquid sky— Spenser

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the flight of his imagination is very swift; the following of it often a breathless business— Day Lewis

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Fleet, which is chiefly in poetic or journalistic use, connotes lightness or nimbleness as well as extreme fastness or rapidity

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antelope are fleet of foot

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how the fleet creature would fly before the wind— Melville

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Quick (see also QUICK 2) applies especially to something that happens promptly or occupies but little time; it suggests alacrity or celerity, especially in action, rather than velocity of movement

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quick thinking saved him from the trap

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thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die— Shak.

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slow to resolve, but in performance quick— Dry den

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Speedy, when applied to persons or their motions or activities, implies extreme quickness and often hurry or haste; when applied to things and their motion or movement, it also often suggests great velocity; in general, it is opposed to dilatory

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no mode sufficiently speedy of obtaining money had ever occurred to me— De Quincey

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hope for their speedy return

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be speedy, darkness— Keats

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make speediest preparation for the journey!— Shelley

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Hasty suggests hurry or precipitousness rather than speed and often connotes the resulting confusion, disorder, or inattention

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gobbled down a hasty meal

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we must, this time, have plans ready—instead of waiting to do a hasty, inefficient, and ill-considered job at the last moment— Roosevelt

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Expeditious adds to quick or speedy the implication of efficiency; it therefore implies the absence of waste, bungling, and undue haste

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an expeditious movement of troops

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there is no expeditious road to pack and label men for God, and save them by the barrel load— Thompson

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Antonyms: slow