celerity

Noun

1. Speed, swiftness.
   • 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....
   • ...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...
   • 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,...

   Synonyms: rapidity alacrity dispatch

   Antonyms: slowness lethargy

2. The speed of an individual wave (as opposed to the speed of groups of waves); often denoted c.

   1. (hydrology) The speed with which a perturbation to the flow propagates through the flow domain.

3. The speed of symbol transmission, now called baud rate.
   • Celerity of dispatching the Chappe telegraph [section title] - 1867, Taliaferro Preston Shaffner, The Telegraph Manual:
   • ...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...