fæst

We tend to skim over most words and only register the immediate meaning, if at all. This is part of our surface culture and surface way of living. Scratch a little, though, and whole vistas open up, and you start to travel through the layers of the past our ancestors left buried there. It’s a wonderful process, because it slows us down, allows us to dwell on meaning, and connect with its deeper sources, bringing the mind to rest in origins. Every word is precious and special.

Looking at a Philip Sidney poem this week, we came across the uncommon use of the word ‘fast’, in the line ‘take fast hold...’. It is not about speed.

We see a similar meaning in being ‘fast asleep’, or ‘steadfast’, and even, more unexpectedly, in the adjective ‘shamefaced’, which literally means ‘restrained by shame’, from the Old English scamfæst. Nothing to do with the ‘face’ after all ! The first meaning of ‘fast’ historically is therefore ‘firmly fixed, constant, secure’.

‘Fast’ in this sense is linked to speed, but only from the 1550’s, just as it is more logically linked to the noun ‘a fast’, refraining from eating. Then you get the colourful expression for unrestrained living, closer to speed, but the opposite of restrained : ‘fast living’ !

Here is what Skeat says in his three entries for the word in his etymological dictionary :

 

 

 

[A.S. = Anglo-Saxon

Du. = Dutch

Dan. = Danish

Swed. = Swedish

Icel. = Icelandic

Goth. = Moeso-Gothic

Scand. = Scandinavian]