Cars Fast and Quick

I used to get abused for driving 'too fast', when in fact I was merely 'quick'.
I used to deliberately tease our secretary, by reverse parking alongside her in a couple of seconds while she was still dithering...I probably never got over about 5mph, but I did it very quickly.
Same as driving onto a roundabout..if you blend in with the traffic and match it's speed you will get on and go round very quickly, but you are not actually going faster than the other traffic.

(BTW why is it I can park the car, switch off, remove my seat belt, get out of the car and be opening the door of my house before Mrs Cat has even opened the passenger door? The same happens when we are going out...'are you ready?...yes...I get in the car...the minutes tick by...my life flashes before me...eventually she'll turn up...she was just closing the patio doors, switching off the PC...plumping the cushions...I dunno...you'd think I'd learn afte 35+years)
Del

Could it be that Mrs Del is waiting on you to act like a gentleman and open the door for her? Try it, you may be surprised at the benefits...

It's simple...
Sat over a fixed distance (1/4mile?)
The quickest car will be the one which gets there first...the fastest is the one which reaches the highest speed.
Del

perfact ans....

Ja broer ons is maar gatstevoor hier!!

Fast = vas = Stop eating

break fast = stop stop eating.

Fast food = Quick Meal = Wimpy burger = slow down indigestion

Fast friends = dik vriende = thick friends = Obese friends

Fast - rapid, quick

I will quickly stop before I am in a corner.

Goer = Faster

Slower = Not so fast.

You must remain a Goer

English can be very confusing. It's based on German, but has brought many words from Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Russian, and almost any other language you can think of. As a result, we have many words that mean the same or almost the same.

Generally, quick refers to style (he passed the other car quickly), while fast refers to speed. This is not always true, though. Sometimes we just want to use a different word because we're bored with the usual one.

What about "Cut to the quick" and "quicken".

Quick in that sense means 'alive'; as in "the Quick & the Dead"

also 'quicksilver' for the elemental metal Hg.

Quick in the "Quick and the Dead" refers to drawing and accurately firing a hand gun in a gunfight. The quickest lived, the not so quick died. Cut to the quick refers to an incision that severs nerves resulting in pain, but can also describe a comment that causes pain (his criticism cut me to the quick). In most common usage quick refers to elapsed time (quick on the draw) while speed refers to distance covered in unit time (clocked at 100 mph). Of course rules have no power if there are no means of enforcement so the terms are often used interchangeably.

er...acceleration off the line vs. top speed or top end?

i'll vote:

fast = speed; quick = 'high G-forces'

Coming from a performance car back ground we would typically say the car with the higher "top speed" has a higher top end. The car with "shorter acceleration" has a faster ET (established time) when timed on the race track. Faster can be used to describe top speed but, here we usually use faster to describe the car with the better time in the 1/4 mile. Either way don't worry about to much, we will figure out what you mean. I work with a "Brit" and I still can't figure out what she says some times

The car with "shorter acceleration" has a faster ET (established time) when timed on the race track.

Elapsed time = the time that has elapsed from when the christmas tree turned green.

Welcome to the insanity. Well what is/was it? Chevelle, Camaro, Nova? Send pictures.

X 67 SS396Chevelle.

GA

Best explanation from a drag racing perspective. Even in road rally, formula one and NASCAR quick is related to acceleration and fast is related to top speed.

Strange enough, most don't know that in drag racing the fastest car (top speed at the finish) is not always the winner (lowest E.T.). Other than reaction time, it is the 60 foot time (how the car hooks up off the line and accelerates) that best predicts the lowest E.T., not the top speed. I have actually changed gear ratios that lowered top speed and E.T.!

Hello 68SS396,

Welcome to CR4. It is a greta site with very helpful and clever members. Especially well done on first post and first GA! GA = Good Answer.

Take care.

" ... however, it seems the words are interchangable."

Yes, the terms are often interchangeable. As our racing friend 68SS396 (Chevelle? ... or Camaro??) implied, "quick" normally relates to time, or acceleration, and "fast" normally relates to distance or higher speed. Hence, in a 1/4 mile (402.34 m), the "quickest" car will reach the finish line in a shorter time span, or have greater acceleration. However, the "fastest" car may also be the "quickest" car (shortest time) or the car that achieved the highest speed during the race, but, because of slower starting time, loss of wheel friction, etc. may have actually finished behind the "quicker" car. That is why, in racing, they normally post both the elapsed time and highest speed of each car. Now, if you're talking McLaren's, Bugatti's, Ford GT's, that's another story.

A Jaguaer is fast, a squirrel is quick.

A top fuel dragster is both fast and quick, however, usually a quicker time is at a lower speed and vise versa.

Your impression is right and proper, also is accepted as normal description for the terms.

A Cobra and a Mongoose are both extremely quick but in a direct line race, the mongoose is long gone because it can run faster than the Cobra can expand/contract/run.

Now the exception would be the rabbit and the turtle...but that is another story.

Thanks for a tremendous response to my question.

I must say I have hope that English will be more clear-cut than that.

On another forum I took on a guy who made a statement that a certain car is the fastest production car in the world. I countered that he is wrong as the SSC Ultimate Aero is currently the fastest as observed by Guinness Book of World records, but there is a faster claim, witnessed by German officials of a Koenigsegg CCXR topping the Ultimate Aero by about 4 km/h. After the smoke from the cyber battle has cleared, it turned out the car mentioned is not a production car at all as it was hugely modified, increasing power by about 300%. The top speed was not the issue either, but a acceleration time for 100 -200 km/h, a spec nobody measure, or at least quotes on the web, from what I can find, so easy to make such a claim as there are no data to counter.

Seems like in arguments of this nature one should first establish exactly what both parties understand by fast.

always were under the impression that faster is used to describe top speed and quicker is used for acceleration. Looking at a dictionary, translating between Afrikaans, my home language, and English however, it seems the words are interchangable.

Your current understanding will get you by just fine...as it suitably comprehends the two words' distinction in everyday speech. Quick more aptly describes a change of motion (whether with or without change of speed); fast more aptly describes speed (in a context in which change of motion or direction is given less or no significance).

A thing that is quick, is so by the apparency of sudden change irrespective of actual velocity. One cannot speak of a thing being "fast" before movement, or before a certain, observable level of speed has been attained...because the 'fastness' cannot as yet have been observed—as Berra might have said: fast is not fast before it's fast. Likewise, quick ceases to become quick as some moment after it has become (only) fast.