4 ms·
Ask HN: Where does the phrase "Fast" originate from?
I've been hearing this term A LOT in companies' marketing, in various YouTube videos, and sometimes used in memes. Where is it actually from? Search engines, Bing, nor ChatGPT don't give a proper answer.
- smoldesu 3y agoIf you're talking about the long-term history of the term: https://www.etymonline.com/word/fast https://www.etymonline.com/word/fast
- PaulHoule 3y agoFast is better than slow. I'm not going to take any guff about "fast fashion" or "slow food". My #1 problem w/ McDonald's is that it fails to deliver on the "fast" part of the brand promise.
- Jensson 3y agoFast food maybe, you get what you want immediately instead of having to wait like you do at a normal restaurant. So FastX would mean that you want to be McDonalds of X.
- jskherman 3y agoUpdate: Did the title not save properly? Sorry about the ambiguous title. What I meant to ask was: "Where does the phrase 'Blazingly Fast' come from?"
- Jtsummers 3y agoSuperlatives and some other words get stripped from titles. Always double check your submission title after submission and edit them back in if appropriate (as in this case). This has been a thing for years, it is not new. I’d resubmit if you want responses at this point or email (contact link at bottom of page) dang to edit it now.
- throwaway154 3y agoMotor racing perhaps. As in, the wheels are on fire. I believe I've heard it in relation to the internet since broadband rollout. But who knows, perhaps that's just past experience fallacy. To see whether or not, try the Wayback Machine. Here's a search for this phrase: https://web.archive.org/web/*/blazingly%20fast https://web.archive.org/web/*/blazingly%20fast
- nickm12 3y agoThe phrase "blazingly fast" is tightly associated with Apple in my mind. Some searching finds that it was part of the marketing of the Power Mac G4 in 1999. No idea if it was used earlier, but The Forbes article even puts the phrase in quotes, perhaps indicating that it was uncommon at the time. https://www.forbes.com/1999/08/31/mu4.html https://www.forbes.com/1999/08/31/mu4.html
- weare138 3y agoAll I know is it's pretty old. I'm from GenX and I remember hearing it when I was a kid.