Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The quality of being precipitant.
  • noun Action or thought marked by impulsiveness or rash haste.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Precipitance; impatience to reach a conclusion or result; overhaste in inference or action.
  • noun Synonyms Rashness, temerity, hastiness.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Suddenness; excessive haste.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the quality of happening with headlong haste or without warning

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The precipitancy, which is the character of the play, is well marked in this short scene of waiting for Juliet's arrival.

    Literary Remains, Volume 2 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1803

  • The position thus assigned to _inquiry_ is very significant of the theoretic precipitancy which is one of Dr. Dr.per's prominent characteristics.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 79, May, 1864 Various

  • But, aiming to arm themselves with terrific and overwhelming strength, by invoking the cooperation of forces from the spiritual, invisible, and diabolical world, with rash "precipitancy," they hurried on the witchcraft prosecutions.

    Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather A Reply Charles Wentworth Upham 1838

  • The precipitancy, which is the character of the play, is well marked in this short scene of waiting for Juliet’s arrival.

    Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1803

  • She paused, in sudden fear of completing the thought into which her birdlike precipitancy had betrayed her.

    Chapter XIV 2010

  • In the precipitancy of feeling, you say, the lover fastens upon an unsuitable mate, and, with possession, love dies.

    The Kempton-Wace Letters 2010

  • Members of the majority knew the precipitancy with which the Constitution had been “pressed upon the state,” he said.

    Ratification Pauline Maier 2010

  • If the Constitution “will bear the examination of the people, who are to be bound thereby, why is such precipitancy used?”

    Ratification Pauline Maier 2010

  • Members of the majority knew the precipitancy with which the Constitution had been “pressed upon the state,” he said.

    Ratification Pauline Maier 2010

  • If the Constitution “will bear the examination of the people, who are to be bound thereby, why is such precipitancy used?”

    Ratification Pauline Maier 2010

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  • "For in his Natural History, the Baron himself affirms that at sight of the Sperm Whale, all fish (sharks included) are 'struck with the most lively terrors,' and 'often in the precipitancy of their flight dash themselves against the rocks with such violence as to cause instantaneous death.'"

    Moby-Dick, ch. 41

    June 15, 2009

  • Am I the only one who chafes at using a word to define its derivative or vice-versa? As in precipitancy being defined as: "The quality of being precipitant."

    September 15, 2023