hasten
verb
Simple meaning
Act or move at high speed.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
haysuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈheɪsən
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
Act or move at high speed
intransitive
To move or act in a quick fashion.
Move hurridly
Speed up the progress of; facilitate
transitive
To make someone speed up or make something happen quicker.
transitive
To cause some scheduled event to happen earlier.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Act or move at high speed
Used this way, hasten is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: act or move at high speed
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.