hastily
Americanadverb
-
with haste; rapidly; speedily.
Late one snowy night in Maryland, moving crews hastily loaded a line of vans and, under cover of darkness, departed the city.
-
without sufficient care or attention.
This book feels far less potent, and far more hastily written, than the earlier work.
-
unnecessarily quickly or rashly; impetuously.
Six months earlier, she had hastily married a former high school classmate.
Usage
What does hastily mean? Hastily means rashly or too quickly and often carelessly.The related adjective hasty most commonly means too fast and often careless.The noun haste most commonly refers to urgency, such as in completing a task. Haste can also be used as another word for speed or swiftness. But haste also commonly 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. This is how hasty and hastily are most commonly used.Doing things hastily is thought to lead to mistakes. Making a decision hastily is making it too quickly, often leading to negative consequences.Hastily can also mean speedily, as in We packed up hastily and left as quickly as we could. Example: Don’t make big decisions hastily—you should always take some time to think about them.
Other Word Forms
- unhastily adverb
Etymology
Origin of hastily
First recorded in 1275–1325; hasty ( def. ) + -ly
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.
It functions as a modern high-tech replacement for an inner steel-and-concrete structure -- known as the Sarcophagus, a defensive layer built hastily after the 1986 incident.
From Barron's
A hastily agreed sale to Swiss trading firm Gunvor was spiked by the Treasury Department, setting off a scramble among other energy companies and investors to buy the potentially lucrative assets.
The dim-witted creature knew exactly who had dangled from a rope ladder hastily lowered from a balloon and landed in the same spreading elm branches that the fluffy-tailed, beady-eyed menace called home.
From Literature
Ridge was coming back into focus, like a hastily reassembled puzzle.
From Literature
Greg Lippmann wrote back hastily and ungrammatically, “Would you like to give us some other bonds that we can tell you what we will pay you.”
From Literature
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.
