haste
Americannoun
-
swiftness of motion; speed; celerity.
He performed his task with great haste. They felt the need for haste.
- Antonyms:
- sloth
-
urgent need of quick action; a hurry or rush.
to be in haste to get ahead in the world.
-
unnecessarily quick action; thoughtless, rash, or undue speed.
Haste makes waste.
- Synonyms:
- precipitation, precipitancy
verb (used with or without object)
-
hastes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
hasted,
past participle, past
-
hasting
present participle
idioms
noun
-
speed, esp in an action; swiftness; rapidity
-
the act of hurrying in a careless or rash manner
-
a necessity for hurrying; urgency
-
to hurry; rush
verb
Usage
What does haste mean? Haste most commonly refers to urgency, such as in completing a task. It can also be used as another word for speed or swiftness, as in We have to move with haste if we want to make it on time. The phrase make haste means to move quickly, hurry up, or rush. Often, haste means urgency or speed that is careless or reckless. This is how the word is used in the expression haste makes waste, which means that rushing things leads to mistakes. The adjective form hasty is most often used in this sense—a hasty decision is one that is thought to have been made too quickly, perhaps leading to negative consequences. The adverb form is hastily. The verb hasten means to go faster or cause to go faster, as in We need to hasten our efforts. Example: In my haste to finish the project, I forgot to put my name on it.
Synonym Usage
See speed.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
-
hastelessnessnoun
-
hastefuladjective
-
hastelessadjective
-
unhastedadjective
-
unhastingadjective
-
hastefullyadverb
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
hastesimple
-
hastessimple
-
have hastedperfect
-
has hastedperfect
-
am hastingprogressive
-
are hastingprogressive
-
is hastingprogressive
-
have been hastingperfect progressive
-
has been hastingperfect progressive
Past
-
hastedsimple
-
had hastedperfect
-
was hastingprogressive
-
were hastingprogressive
-
had been hastingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of haste
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English, from Old French from Germanic; akin to Old Frisian hāste, Old English hæst “violence,” Old Norse heifst “hatred,” Gothic haifsts “quarrel”
Explanation
When something is done in haste, it's done fast, and often with carelessness. In his haste to finish the paper, he didn't notice he had replaced "taste" with "waste" during spell-checking, so his title became "Foods of Our Home State: What a Waste!" The old saying goes "haste makes waste," and when you try to do things too quickly, sometimes you do them wrong or have to do them all over again. You can use the noun haste for things done with extraordinary speed and often in a situation where there's pressure to perform or complete a task. "In her haste to catch the train she ran six blocks, but when she boarded, she noticed she was wearing one blue tennis shoe and one red one."
Vocabulary lists containing haste
List 2
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"Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, Act III
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"Because I Could Not Stop for Death" by Emily Dickinson
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
I realized that replying to complicated requests or problems in anger or haste was never smart, so I kept his rule to slow my response time down eight hours for future correspondence.
From Slate ● Sep. 27, 2026
A team of animal lovers has come to the rescue of pets people left behind in their haste in the area west of the wine-making capital of Bordeaux.
From Barron's ● Jul. 30, 2026
Earlier this year, NV Energy informed Liberty that it would no longer serve as its wholesale energy provider after mid-May next year, and urged Liberty to make haste to secure an alternate supplier.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026
Met Police chief Mark Rowley accused Polanski of amplifying "inaccurate and misinformed commentary" and Polanski later apologised for "sharing a tweet in haste".
From BBC ● May 6, 2026
Nhamo almost fell out of the tree in her haste.
From "A Girl Named Disaster" by Nancy Farmer
Zephyrus, fond lover, comes to woo; With airy step he hastes the pastures through, And steals a kiss from Luna as she nods Drowsy with fragrant dew.
From Pan and Æolus: Poems by Charles Hamilton Musgrove
Proud Signild she hastes her array to put on, And unto the hall to Sir Loumor she’s gone.
From Proud Signild and Other Ballads by George Henry Borrow
The country folk having gone early to bed, tired with their day’s labor, L’Allegro hastes to the city, where the pleasures of life are prolonged further into the night.
From Minor Poems by Milton by John Milton
The man that hastes to become rich often finds that he has only brought on ruin.
From Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse by Harrison Weir
Now he hastes away Into a distant land, and doth convey The ashes in a turf.
From Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II by E. K. (Edmund Kerchever) Chambers
A group of Templars hasted to him, seized him and repelled him from me.
From Textbooks ● Apr. 19, 2023
So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven and hasted not to go down about a whole day.
From Time Magazine Archive
It stood still in the midst of the heaven and hasted not to go down.
From Time Magazine Archive
Exclaiming, “What a nice thing!” he hasted back to his master Ogula, and called him.
From Fetichism in West Africa Forty Years' Observations of Native Customs and Superstitions by Robert Hamill Nassau
The miller hasted and drew his dam,65 Binnorie, O Binnorie; And there he found a drown'd woman; By the bonny milldams of Binnorie.
From English and Scottish Ballads, Volume II (of 8) by Various
Sun—or moon—that shines so brightly, 'Tis not sun, or moon that shines so brightly, 'Tis the bridegroom hasting to the marriage.
From An Anthology of Jugoslav Poetry; Serbian Lyrics by Various
It was his hasting to bless Esau which drove Rebekah to checkmate him by winning the blessing for her favourite.
From The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Genesis by Marcus Dods
Behold! where yonder That honest man, that faithful, brave, Dumont, Is hasting to thy aid— Jane S. Dumont!
From Jane Shore A Tragedy by Nicholas Rowe
These be King's men, hasting after the Master of the Mignons.
From The White Plumes of Navarre A Romance of the Wars of Religion by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett
It is compared to the swoop of the eagle hasting to the prey; to the swift post, to the bubble on the river.
From The Iron Furnace Slavery and Secession by John H. Aughey
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
