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Very swift or quick; moving with celerity; fast; as, a rapid stream; a rapid flight; a rapid motion. Ascend my chariot; guide the rapid wheels. Milton.

A mount permitting easy and quick elevation or depression and training of the gun, and fitting with a device for taking up the recoil.

. L.), applied to all guns loading with the charge in bags, and formerly from quick-fire. Rapid-fire guns in the navy also sometimes include automatic or semiautomatic rapid-fire guns; the former being automatic guns of not less than one inch caliber, firing a shell of not less than one pound weight, the explosion of e…

The quality or state of being rapid; swiftness; celerity; velocity; as, the rapidity of growth or improvement.

In a rapid manner.

Quality of being rapid; rapidity.

ess in strength or violence; as, pain abates, a storm abates. The fury of Glengarry . . . rapidly abated. Macaulay.

se of; as, to abuse one's authority. This principle (if one may so abuse the word) shoots rapidly into popularity. Froude.

Implying or producing rapid action; as, an active disease; an active remedy.

To perform the arithmetical operation of addition; as, he adds rapidly.

A sickness felt by aëronauts due to high speed of flights and rapidity in changing altitudes, combining some symptoms of mountain sickness and some of seasickness.

Short and rapid breathing; a panting; asthma. Glanvill.

The production of the tones of a chord in rapid succession, as in playing the harp, and not simultaneously; a strain thus played.

m attitude; one's mental attitude in respect to religion. The attitude of the country was rapidly changing. J. R. Green. To strike an attitude, to take an attitude for mere effect.

croscopic organisms. They are very widely diffused in nature, and multiply with marvelous rapidity, both by fission and by spores. Certain species are active agents in fermentation, while others appear to be the cause of certain infectious diseases. See Bacillus.

To become barbarous. The Roman empire was barbarizing rapidly from the time of Trajan. De Quincey.

nder Aneroid. -- Marine barometer, a barometer with tube contracted at bottom to prevent rapid oscillations of the mercury, and suspended in gimbals from an arm or support on shipboard. -- Mountain barometer, a portable mercurial barometer with tripod support, and long scale, for measuring heights. -- Siphon baromet…

To sound with more or less rapid alternations of greater and less intensity, so as to produce a pulsating effect; -- said of instruments, tones, or vibrations, not perfectly in unison. A beating wind (Naut.), a wind which necessitates tacking in order to make progress. -- To beat about, to try to find; to search by va…

Flighty; passing rapidly from one subject to another; not having the faculty of attention. Bacon.

is now restricted to very limited districts in the region of the Rocky Mountains, and is rapidly decreasing in numbers.