celerity

plural celerities

1. uncountableusuallySpeed, swiftness.

   The celerity of executions is a generally neglected issue in the empirical literature on deterrence and capital punishment.

   1998, Hugo Adam Bedau, The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies

   4 more examples

   O most kind maid, / It was the swift celerity of his death, / Which I did think with slower foot came on, / That brain'd my purpose.

   c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, (please specify the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)]

   ...when a new medium for attraction was started in the bazaar to which we have alluded, and her letter was dispatched with all possible celerity, insisting that her daughters "should work day and night"—so ran the document—for three weeks,...

   1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XXXV, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 153

   The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting on the other side of the deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were casting loose the tackles and bands of the boat which swung there.

   1851, Herman Melville, chapter 48, in Moby-Dick

   Warning messages were relayed to the signalmen at Slough East and Dolphin Junction boxes with such celerity that the up main signals were replaced to danger in front of the express before it finally stopped. The signalman at Dolphin Junction just had time to replace the down main signals and pull the emergency lever to lay detonators in front of the fast approaching 7 p.m. Paddington-Reading train.

   1960 March, “Talking of Trains: The Slough Derailment”, in Trains Illustrated, page 132

   Synonyms: rapidity, alacrity, dispatch · Antonyms: slowness, lethargy

2. uncountableusuallyclimatologyThe speed of an individual wave (as opposed to the speed of groups of waves); often denoted c.
   1. uncountableusuallyclimatologyThe speed with which a perturbation to the flow propagates through the flow domain.
3. dateduncountableusuallycommunicationsThe speed of symbol transmission, now called baud rate.

   Celerity of dispatching the Chappe telegraph [section title]

   1867, Taliaferro Preston Shaffner, The Telegraph Manual

   1 more example

   ...and many endeavours have been made, not only to transmit signals with celerity, but also to transmit more than one communication at the same time along the same wire.

   1885, The Wonders of the Universe, Cassell Publishing Company