rapidly
Americanadverb
-
within a short period of time.
There are thousands of languages spoken in the world today, but many of them are rapidly approaching obsolescence and extinction.
-
with great speed; swiftly.
Bats are more likely than birds to detect rapidly spinning turbine blades and avoid flying into them.
Other Word Forms
- ultrarapidly adverb
Etymology
Origin of rapidly
Explanation
When you do something rapidly, you do it very quickly. A rapidly moving train is going at full speed. You may notice that the grass in your yard grows rapidly during the rainy summer days and more slowly when there's a heat wave. You might also get a speeding ticket for driving too rapidly in a school zone. In either case, something's happening fast. The adverb rapidly comes from the adjective rapid, "moving quickly," with the Latin root rapidus, "hasty, swift, fierce, or impetuous."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“With AI adoption broadening and workloads for new use cases scaling up rapidly, compute capacity is increasingly becoming the main constraint, driving accelerated investment in AI infrastructure,” M’Saad said.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 21, 2026
“Seeing that he sold it out and had a second show really shows how our culture has spread rapidly across America,” Gill said.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 21, 2026
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined to block the new plan on an emergency basis, and rapidly calendared the case for oral argument.
From Slate • Apr. 21, 2026
The big problem hydrogen faces is that making it from electricity currently uses far more energy that just storing that energy in a battery - and battery technology is advancing rapidly.
From BBC • Apr. 21, 2026
She could feel it advancing rapidly up her back and belly, moving for her head.
From Anya and the Dragon by Sofiya Pasternack
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
