Todays word of the day celerity • \suh-LAIR-uh-tee\ • noun : rapidity of motion or action : swiftness Examples: Monica was impressed by the ease and celerity with which the new waiter she had hired could wipe down and set up a table. The Common Core entered public discourse suddenly this year, due in large part to the celerity with which the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation financed and coordinated its implementation in 2010. — Micah Meadowcroft, The American Spectator, June 9, 2014 Did you know? In the novel Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham tells of an undertakers shop that used the words Economy, Celerity, Propriety as part of a window display involving silver lettering on a black cloth and two model coffins. But celerity isnt dead in English writing, where it has proven its vitality since the Middle Ages. Shakespeare used it in Henry V when the chorus recited, Thus with imagind wing our swift scene flies, / In motion of no less celerity / Than that of thought. Benjamin Franklin used it as a synonym of velocity. And the speedy term (which can be traced back to celer, a Latin word meaning swift) is still keeping pace today.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 13:53:56 +0000