apace

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English[edit]

WOTD – 23 February 2016

Etymology[edit]

From Middle English apās (“step by step, slowly; quickly, rapidly; at once, promptly”), from Old French à pas (“at a quick pace”).[1]

Pronunciation[edit]

Adverb[edit]

apace (not comparable)

  1. Quickly, rapidly, with speed.
    Construction of the new offices is proceeding apace.
    • c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii], page 65:
      Gallop apace, you fiery footed ſteedes, / Towards Phœbus lodging, ſuch a Wagoner / As Phaeton would whip you to the weſt, / And bring in Cloudie night immediately.
    • c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i], page 145:
      Ow faire Hippolita, our nuptiall houre / Drawes on apace: foure happy daies bring in / Another Moon […]
    • 1850, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Blessed Damozel, The Germ; reprinted in Poems [Collection of British and American Authors; 1380], copyright edition, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1873, OCLC 933409239, page 2, lines 19–24:
      (To one, it is ten years of years.
      ... Yet now, and in this place,
      Surely she leaned o'er me—her hair
      Fell all about my face. ...
      Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves.
      The whole year sets apace.)
    • 1954, C. S. Lewis, chapter 1, in The Horse and His Boy, Collins, published 1998:
      Twilight was coming on apace and a star or two was already out, but the remains of the sunset could still be seen in the west.
    • 2017 August 20, “The Observer view on the attacks in Spain”, in The Observer‎[1]:
      Despite efforts to prevent it, officials say, the radicalisation of young Muslims living in Europe proceeds apace.

Synonyms[edit]

Derived terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ “apās, adv.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 13 January 2018; “apace”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading[edit]

Anagrams[edit]

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