apace
English
editEtymology
editFrom Middle English apās (“step by step, slowly; quickly, rapidly; at once, promptly”), from Old French à pas (“at a quick pace”).[1]
Pronunciation
edit- (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA(key): /əˈpeɪs/
Audio (General Australian): (file) - Rhymes: -eɪs
Adverb
editapace (not comparable)
- 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:
- 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.)
- (To one, it is ten years of years.
- 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
editDerived terms
editTranslations
editQuickly, rapidly, with speed
References
edit- ^ “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- Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “apace”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
Anagrams
editCategories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old French
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/eɪs
- Rhymes:English/eɪs/2 syllables
- English lemmas
- English adverbs
- English uncomparable adverbs
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with quotations