{"id":6663,"date":"2012-02-18T15:54:58","date_gmt":"2012-02-18T15:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=6663"},"modified":"2012-02-18T15:54:58","modified_gmt":"2012-02-18T15:54:58","slug":"haste-and-speed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=6663","title":{"rendered":"Haste and speed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A friend asked me to investigate the expression <strong>more haste, less speed<\/strong> as it doesn&#8217;t seem to make sense. I&#8217;ve always interpreted as meaning you should do something more hastily and less quickly, which seems illogical to me.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/84478?rskey=gE7pDt&#038;result=1&#038;isAdvanced=false#eid\">OED<\/a> defines haste as: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>1. Urgency or impetuosity of movement resulting in or tending to swiftness or rapidity; quickness, speed, expedition (properly of voluntary action).<\/p>\n<p>2. Such quickness of action as excludes due consideration or reflection; hurry, precipitancy, want of deliberation, rashness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The primary meaning of speed is given as:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Quickness in moving or making progress from one place to another, usually as the result of special exertion; celerity, swiftness; also, power or rate of progress.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So both words are related to swiftness, but haste can also indicate imeptuousness. There are a number of other meanings of speed though, which are now obsolete:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>1. abundance; 2. power, might; 3. Success, prosperity, good fortune; profit, advancement, furtherance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I suspect that the speed part of &#8216;more haste, less speed&#8217; might be using speed in the sense of success, good fortune, etc. That would make more sense.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, maybe the saying means that if you doing something hastily, you will also do it more slowly. So maybe it&#8217;s encouraging you to slow down, take your time and do it better.<\/p>\n<p>How do you interpret this expression? Do you know any simliar ones?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend asked me to investigate the expression more haste, less speed as it doesn&#8217;t seem to make sense. I&#8217;ve always interpreted as meaning you should do something more hastily and less quickly, which seems illogical to me. The OED defines haste as: 1. Urgency or impetuosity of movement resulting in or tending to swiftness [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}