Word.ws English Dictionary

make fast

make fast verb: to tie reliably.

Verb

make fast (third-person singular simple present makes fast, present participle making fast, simple past and past participle made fast)

  1. To tie reliably.
    • I pulled back, made fast again to the jetty, and then went to sleep at last.1898, Joseph Conrad, Youth
    • It is a well-known fact that an immense proportion of boat accidents would never happen if people held the sheet in their hands instead of making it fast; and yet, unless it be some martinet of a professional mariner or some landsman with shattered nerves, every one of God's creatures makes it fast.1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque

Forms of make fast

third-person singular presentmakes fast
present participlemaking fast
past participlemade fast
pastmade fast

Questions about make fast

What does make fast mean?
Make fast means to tie reliably.
What part of speech is make fast?
Make fast is a verb.
What is the past tense of make fast?
The past tense of make fast is made fast.

Words near make fast in the dictionary

  1. make ends meet
  2. make every effort
  3. make eyes
  4. make faces
  5. make fair weather
  6. make fast
  7. make fetch happen
  8. make file
  9. make files
  10. make fish of one and flesh of another
  11. make fish of one and fowl of another

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: make fast (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “make fast.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/make_fast. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.