Word Type
Fast can be a verb, a noun, an adverb, an adjective or an interjection.
fast used as a verb:
- To abstain from or eat very little food; to abstain from food for religious reasons.
Verbs are action words and state of being words. Examples of action words are: ran, attacking, dreamed. Examples of "state of being" words are: is, was, be. Learn more →
fast used as a noun:
- The act or practice of abstaining from food or of eating very little food.
- The period of time during which one abstains from or eats very little food.
- A train that calls at only some stations it passes between its origin and destination, typically just the principal stations.
Nouns are naming words. They are used to represent a person (soldier, Jamie), place (Germany, beach), thing (telephone, mirror), quality (hardness, courage), or an action (a run, a punch). Learn more →
fast used as an adverb:
- In a firm or secure manner, securely; in such a way as not to be moved.
"Hold this rope as fast as you can." - Deeply or soundly.
"He is fast asleep." - Immediately following in place or time; close, very near.
"The horsemen came fast on our heels." - Quickly, with great speed; within a short time.
"Do it as fast as you can." - Ahead of the correct time or schedule.
"I think my watch is running fast."
An adverb is a word that modifies an adjective (very red), verb (quietly running), or another adverb (very carefully). Learn more →
fast used as an adjective:
- Firmly or securely fixed in place; stable.
"That rope is dangerously loose. Make it fast!" - Of people: steadfast, with unwavering feeling. (Now only in set phrases like "fast friend".)
- Moving with great speed, or capable of doing so; swift, rapid.
"I am going to buy a fast car." - Deep or sound (of sleep); fast asleep (of people).
- Of dyes or colours: not running or fading when subjected to detrimental conditions such as wetness or intense light; permanent.
"All the washing has come out pink. That red tee-shirt was not fast." - Having an extravagent lifestyle or immoral habits.
"She's fast – she slept with him on their first date.." - Ahead of the correct time or schedule.
"There must be something wrong with the hall clock. It is always fast." - More sensitive to light than average.
Adjectives are are describing words. An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or pronoun (examples: small, scary, silly). Adjectives make the meaning of a noun more precise. Learn more →
fast used as an interjection:
- Short for "stand fast", a warning not to pass between the arrow and the target.
An interjection is an abrupt remark like Oh! or Dear me, or Eww. It is usually used to express the strong emotions of the speaker. The sentence 'Congratulations! You won the gold medal!' shows the use of 'congratulations' as an interjection. Learn more →
Related Searches
What type of word is fast?
- Adverb usage: Hold this rope as fast as you can.
- Adverb usage: He is fast asleep.
- Adverb usage: The horsemen came fast on our heels.
- Adverb usage: Do it as fast as you can.
- Adverb usage: I think my watch is running fast.
- Adjective usage: That rope is dangerously loose. Make it fast!
- Adjective usage: I am going to buy a fast car.
- Adjective usage: All the washing has come out pink. That red tee-shirt was not fast.
- Adjective usage: She's fast – she slept with him on their first date..
- Adjective usage: There must be something wrong with the hall clock. It is always fast.
Unfortunately, with the current database that runs this site, I don't have data about which senses of fast are used most commonly. I've got ideas about how to fix this but will need to find a source of "sense" frequencies. Hopefully there's enough info above to help you understand the part of speech of fast, and guess at its most common usage.
Word Type
For those interested in a little info about this site: it's a side project that I developed while working on Describing Words and Related Words. Both of those projects are based around words, but have much grander goals. I had an idea for a website that simply explains the word types of the words that you search for - just like a dictionary, but focussed on the part of speech of the words. And since I already had a lot of the infrastructure in place from the other two sites, I figured it wouldn't be too much more work to get this up and running.
The dictionary is based on the amazing Wiktionary project by wikimedia. I initially started with WordNet, but then realised that it was missing many types of words/lemma (determiners, pronouns, abbreviations, and many more). This caused me to investigate the 1913 edition of Websters Dictionary - which is now in the public domain. However, after a day's work wrangling it into a database I realised that there were far too many errors (especially with the part-of-speech tagging) for it to be viable for Word Type.
Finally, I went back to Wiktionary - which I already knew about, but had been avoiding because it's not properly structured for parsing. That's when I stumbled across the UBY project - an amazing project which needs more recognition. The researchers have parsed the whole of Wiktionary and other sources, and compiled everything into a single unified resource. I simply extracted the Wiktionary entries and threw them into this interface! So it took a little more work than expected, but I'm happy I kept at it after the first couple of blunders.
Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: the UBY project (mentioned above), @mongodb and express.js.
Currently, this is based on a version of wiktionary which is a few years old. I plan to update it to a newer version soon and that update should bring in a bunch of new word senses for many words (or more accurately, lemma).