One of the great things about studying etymology is that it can reveal connections that help us to better understand words. For example, while mowing your lawn with celerity would get you finished sooner than normal, it might not be worth the corners of grass you overlooked in the process.Įxample: The crowd at the finish line gushed over the marathon winner's celerity.Įxample: The celerity of her response made me wonder whether her answer was sincere. Something with celerity moves with eagerness and with little hesitation though this can be helpful in many situations - after all, dilatory text messages wouldn't do much good - the word itself doesn't necessarily imply any sense of benefit or detriment. Anything that happens with celerity goes extremely quickly think of the speed at which a text message travels or the swift passing of a warm, breezy Spring day. Looking up a new word as soon as possible after you hear it greatly increases the odds of retention, making celerity a valuable trait for language learners!Ĭelerity defines rapidness in motion or activity.

When you encounter an unfamiliar word, how quickly do you move to check your lexicon? If you're like us, you take action immediately, rifling through your dictionary or, preferably, running to your favorite online word bank to define the alien phrase before it slips your mind.

Celerity used in a sentence