fast [OE] The two meanings of fast, ‘at high speed’ and ‘abstain from food’, are different words, both Old English. The first originally meant ‘firmly fixed in place’, a meaning surviving in such uses as ‘colour-fast’ and ‘make a rope fast’, and in its close relative fasten [OE]. The conflicting sense of moving quickly [ME] seems to have developed via fast coming to mean ‘reliable, enduring’ so that something like ‘a fast horse’ was initially reliable and could keep going for a long time, after which the idea of one that would move quickly was but a short step. Fast and loose [L16th] was an old fairground gambling game in which the player put a finger into one of the two figure-of-eight loops of a twisted belt or rope so that it caught in a loop when the belt or rope was pulled away. If it was not held, or ‘fast’, the punter lost the money. The person organizing the game could easily make sure the loops always came free by twisting them in a particular way, which is where we get the expression play fast and loose. Fast food has been eaten since the beginning of the 1950s in the USA.