apace

English
WOTD – 23 February 2016

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

Adverb

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:
      Despite efforts to prevent it, officials say, the radicalisation of young Muslims living in Europe proceeds apace.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Translations

References
  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

Anagrams
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