Other forms: accelerated, accelerating, accelerates
To accelerate is to go faster and faster. Your foot goes down and the car keeps gaining speed.
The literal sense belongs to vehicles and to physics, where acceleration has a precise meaning: the rate at which speed changes, not the speed itself. That distinction matters, because a car going from ten to twenty is accelerating just as hard as one going from a hundred to a hundred and ten. The figurative use is everywhere in news and business — the decline accelerated, plans to accelerate the rollout. Its formal opposite is decelerate, and its everyday one is brake.
1verbaccelerateTo move faster and faster.
“The train accelerated out of the station.”
2verbhappenTo make something happen sooner or more quickly.
“The war accelerated the development of radar.”
Also accepted in games: speed up
To accelerate is to add quickness. Latin ad, to, plus celerō, to hasten, from celer, meaning quick.
Latin
accelerātus
English, today
accelerate
Built from
Learned borrowing from Latin accelerātus. First attested in the 1520s. Either from Latin accelerātus, perfect passive participle of accelerō (“to accelerate, hasten”) (see -ate and -ate), formed from ad + celerō (“to hasten”), which is from celer (“quick”) (see celerity), or a back-formation from acceleration.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA