HASTE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does haste mean? 

• HASTE (noun)
  The noun HASTE has 3 senses:

1. overly eager speed (and possible carelessness)

2. the act of moving hurriedly and in a careless manner

3. a condition of urgency making it necessary to hurry

  Familiarity information: HASTE used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HASTE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Overly eager speed (and possible carelessness)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

haste; hastiness; hurriedness; hurry; precipitation

Context example:

he soon regretted his haste

Hypernyms ("haste" is a kind of...):

fastness; speed; swiftness (a rate (usually rapid) at which something happens)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "haste"):

abruptness; precipitance; precipitancy; precipitateness; precipitousness; suddenness (the quality of happening with headlong haste or without warning)

Derivation:

hasty (excessively quick)

hasty (done with very great haste and without due deliberation)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The act of moving hurriedly and in a careless manner

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

haste; hurry; rush; rushing

Context example:

in his haste to leave he forgot his book

Hypernyms ("haste" is a kind of...):

motion; move; movement (the act of changing location from one place to another)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "haste"):

bolt; dash (the act of moving with great haste)

scamper; scramble; scurry (rushing about hastily in an undignified way)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A condition of urgency making it necessary to hurry

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

haste; hurry

Context example:

in a hurry to lock the door

Hypernyms ("haste" is a kind of...):

urgency (the state of being urgent; an earnest and insistent necessity)

 Context examples 

When he came out, she said to him: Listen, dearest Roland, we must fly in all haste; my stepmother wanted to kill me, but has struck her own child.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

I hate to wait, so if you mean ever to do it, make haste and have it over quickly, said Jo pettishly.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Read on: only make haste, for I suffer.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

You will be too late if you do not make haste.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

I write a few lines in haste to say that I am safe—and well advanced on my voyage.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Without haste, with the air of one resigned to misfortune Bill turned his head, and from where he sat counted the dogs.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

But I could see four or five men running in great haste, up the stairs, to the top of the island, who then disappeared.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

They elevated the end of the hatch-cover with pitiful haste, and, like a dog flung overside, the dead man slid feet first into the sea.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

He peered into the envelope, held it to the light, but could not trust his eyes, and in trembling haste tore the envelope apart.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

In my haste I thrust the key into my pocket, and dropped my stick while I was chasing Teddy, who had run up the curtain.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)