Accelerated

How to spell accelerated

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce accelerated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does accelerated mean?

1. verbCaused something to move faster or to happen sooner than planned.
2. adjectiveMade faster, more intensive, or completed in a shorter time than usual.

Accelerated in a sentence

• verb

  The new factory line accelerated production well beyond the original target.

• adjective

  She enrolled in an accelerated degree programme to finish a year early.

• verb

  Falling interest rates accelerated the housing recovery across the region.

• adjective

  The company offered an accelerated repayment schedule to clear the debt sooner.

Where does accelerated come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb accelerare, meaning 'to hasten' or 'to quicken'. That verb was built from the prefix ad-, meaning 'to' or 'towards', and the adjective celer, meaning 'swift' or 'fast', so the literal sense was 'to move towards swiftness'. English adopted 'accelerate' in the late 1500s, and the past form 'accelerated' followed naturally as the language built standard verb endings onto it. The same celer root survives in the rarer word 'celerity', meaning quickness, and you can still feel that 'swift' core inside it. The spelling trap lives entirely at the front: the single c after the doubled cc, written 'acce', which fluent adults often mishandle by doubling the wrong letter.

How the word is built

• ac- (from ad-: to, towards)
• celer (swift)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)
• -ed (past tense / participle)